I, Potter
by Ynyr
Summary: In the year 2980 a team of archeologists discovers a secret autobiography written by Harry Potter, the Great Seeker who brought peace and prosperity to the world. It paints a very different picture than the one found in the official history books.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer**: My name is not Joanne Rowling or Robert Graves. I am writing this story for my amusement, not for any profit.

* * *

_Professor Phillips and her team of archaeological students were working three kilometers below the surface of the planet, and that was still dangerous even in the late thirtieth century. According to most geological experts, the pyramid-shaped chamber they were exploring and documenting should have collapsed a few months after it was cut into the granite bedrock, but the countless glowing runes on the walls had kept it stable. The five interior surfaces of the "pyramid" were covered with these runes—even the floor underneath her._

_Looking around the large space, Phillips still couldn't believe what she was seeing. The pyramid was nearly a hundred meters wide at its base, and at the exact center was a simple stone table about a meter high. That is where they found the book waiting for them in perfect stasis. How had something of this importance stayed hidden for nearly a millennium? _

_While Phillips and her dedicated students didn't mind being this far underground, her colleague Professor Jacobi was a nervous wreck. The gifted historian hated working anywhere but in his comfortable office. However a chance to see an authentic book from the late twenty-first century brought him scurrying down the long excavation shaft they dug earlier in the week._

"_Well, have you finished with your translation yet?" Phillips asked. The poor man had been sitting at that small and flimsy field desk for twenty hours without a break._

"_Yes, but I don't why you bothered calling me down here. The automatic translation provided by your glasses are just as accurate as anything I can do."_

"_Are you sure about that? I skimmed over the book before you arrived this morning, and it seemed rather... crude to me. I was hoping that with all your experience with primary sources and literature from that era you could provide me with a more nuance reading of the text."_

"_I'm afraid that my first impression matches yours.__ If __this book is really authentic—"_

"—_trust me, according to all our tests it is—"_

"—_then it seemed that the standard historical view of the Great Seeker is a bit inaccurate."_

"_That's putting it mildly," Phillips muttered to herself._

_Jacobi finally stood up and stretched his thick arms behind his back. "Now that you've found __his__ autobiography, what are you going to do with it?"_

"_I'm going to download a copy of it, and release it to the public when I reach the surface."_

"_Do you honestly think that is a good idea?"_

_Phillips laughed. "What, are you suggesting that I burn it?"_

"_I am suggesting that you sit down and read this book again. Carefully this time. We can talk about it tomorrow when you're done, and after I've gotten a good night's sleep. Until then I am asking you to keep a lid on this. Please."_

_Professor Jacobi had been a close friend for over ten years, so Phillips could tell that he was genuinely frightened. Maybe he was right to be. This was no longer a simple archeological dig that might interest a few thousand people at most. This was a major historical discovery that would seize the imagination of billions. It also had the potential to annoy many important court officials. Officials who could crush Professor Sian Phillips and her young archaeological students like insects if they wanted to._

"_Alright, reading the whole thing again does sounds like a good idea at this point."_

_So she sat down at the flimsy field desk, activated her glasses, and started to read. It was even worse than she remembered._

* * *

I, Harry James Potter, being of sound mind (not true) in a sound body (also not true) have finally decided to put my life story to parchment. Why the hell am I doing this at my advanced age, and why do I intend to hide the damn thing when I'm finished? Those are reasonable questions, and the only answer I can give you is that a Seer told me to.

I was at my one-hundredth birthday party. (How pathetic is it to have a birthday party at that age? Birthday parties are for children, not bloody adults.) The VIPs were out in force, and to be honest I didn't even know most of them. And the ones that I did know, I didn't like. The only thing that made the evening bearable was the presence of my charming wife. Her hair had recently gone white, and I was starting to fall in love with her again. Gray hair: not attractive. Pure white hair: attractive. I have no idea why, or if it's just me.

As I was saying, I was at my one-hundredth birthday party when a blind Hag seized my arm with a vice-like grip. (I'm not being cruel. She really was a Hag and rather good-looking compared to most of her sisters. She was also blind. Sybil Trelawney always wore those coke bottles glasses, so I think impaired vision part of the job description for a Seer.) From the unnatural tone of her voice I could tell the news wasn't going to be good.

"**TO PRESERVE THE TRUTH, HIDE IT AWAY. SET YOUR DESCENDANTS FREE FROM THEIR CAPTIVITY."**

At the time I just dismissed the Hag's words. (In fact I later had to use a pensieve to remember the exact words she spoke that night. A very useful tool, the pensieve. I never would have been able to write this autobiography without one.) I had heard several prophecies before, and this one didn't seem terribly important. Tell me that I have to kill another Dark Lord, and I'm right on it. But to "PRESERVE THE TRUTH"? What the hell is that suppose to mean? I figured I had enough on my plate already, and my descendents could take care of themselves.

However as the months and then years began to pass that harmless prophecy—and I was sure it was the real thing—began to gnaw at my brain. Everywhere I looked I saw the lies that were already being told about me even while I was still alive. After I was dead I knew the situation would get progressively worse. I bet that the only things you know about the "Great Seeker" in the future are those bloody lies.

Faced with this unpleasant epiphany, I decided to "PRESERVE THE TRUTH".

But it would be the "TRUTH" as I saw it.

It took a year's worth of my nonexistent spare time to write this autobiography, another year to dig this underground chamber in secret, and another year to carve all the runes. I'm quite proud of them. The runes are tied directly to my blood, and they act like a kind of magical hourglass. On my one-thousand birthday the magic hiding the chamber will disappear forever. (At least I think so. Theory was never my strong suit.) The autobiography you are now reading will be my birthday present to my descendants—if any of them are still alive.

* * *

Now that I've gotten the "why" out of the way, let's get started. There is no sense in being modest here. I'm the most famous person in the world. There have been over eight-hundred major biographies written about me so far, and I'm assuming that at least a few of them survived until your time. That means you already know the basic outline of my life, and I don't feel like going over all that painful history in detail. Instead I will just go over the highlights, and point out the obvious errors the so-called historians have made.

I suppose I should go all the way back to the beginning, but the problem is that I don't really know anything about the beginning of my life. And the people who did know didn't bother to share their memories with me before they died. My father was James Potter, who was a wizard from an ancient line of wizards. My mother Lily Potter _nee_ Evans was a witch, but she came from good muggle stock. I'm pretty sure about those two really being my parents because everyone in the magical world told me I looked just like my father, but with my mother's green eyes. It got annoying after the first dozen times.

What were my parents James and Lily like? What were their hopes and dreams? They hated each other at first, so why did they fall in love? What did they think about me, their only child? Was I supposed to have a brother or sister or several brothers and sisters? Why were they fighting for Albus Dumbledore and against Tom Riddle? I don't know the real answers to any of these questions, and neither do the historians.

My first memory (and this is a big part of why I'm not of sound mind) is of my mother Lily being murdered by Tom Riddle. Some people called him Lord Voldemort or You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Those people are all idiots. The name on his muggle birth certificate was Tom Riddle, so that is what I've always called him.

Once the bastard Riddle (he really was one—a bastard, I mean) killed my parents he turned his wand on me. What happened in the next few seconds is a mystery even to even the greatest of magical scholars. Did my mum Lily set a magical trap of some kind for Riddle? Did Fate intervene to protect its chosen champion from harm? Was my magic strong enough to block the unblockable Killing Curse?

Let's get one thing straight right now: I am a very powerful wizard. It's pretty much the only thing I have going for me. I'm certainly not a genius, and I don't know any obscure spells or dueling techniques. I don't even have any cool runic tattoos. What I do have is a huge surplus of magic flowing through the veins of my short and skinny body. It has saved my life and the lives of my loved ones a hundred times over, so I'm grateful to my parents for their superior DNA.

Like I was saying, no one knows what happened that Halloween Night in Godric's Hollow. What I do know is that at dawn both of my parents were dead, I was still alive, and Tom Riddle's first body had been utterly destroyed. So how did the bastard manage to get a new body over a decade later? If you don't know how he pulled off his twisted resurrection, then don't expect me to tell you. Some secrets are so horrible that they are best left buried here in the past.

Since my parents were dead I had to spend the next ten years living with my Aunt Petunia and her family in Little Whinging, which was a dreary suburban town outside of London. No one besides Dumbledore was happy about my living arrangements.

About Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore: yes, he was a manipulative old hypocrite who like diddling Dark Lords in his younger days, but he did keep me alive and he did win the war against his former student Tom Riddle. As I've gotten older I've found that the moral calculus of his life is beyond my limited ability to judge.

In a moment of weakness even I named one of my sons after Dumbledore, but I never called him Albus. It's was always just Al. What does that say about my relationship with my former Headmaster? I'm not sure, but I doubt it's a good sign.

After ten years in a cupboard under the stairs (that part of my life story is sadly true) I was off to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I hated living at Number Four, Privet Drive with my Aunt Petunia and my Uncle Vernon and my fat cousin Dudley, so I was happy to leave them all in the dust.

But to be honest my time living with them wasn't nearly as bad as others have made it out to be. It wasn't like I was cleaning toxic asbestos from rusty old ocean freighters like those poor kids in Bangladesh or anything. My relatives didn't love me, but them did shelter and feed me for sixteen years. They were forced into the situation by Dumbledore, so what more could you've asked of them?

Now on to my time at Hogwarts. It was a bloody mess, and that is the truth. You don't believe me? You think it was all fairy tale castles and grand adventures? It was not. Let's go through the highlights of my next seven years. Keep in mind that this stuff really happened to me and my friends.

Year One: I was eleven years-old, and I killed an adult wizard named Quirinus Quirrell. Did I really kill him with my magic? Or was it Tom Riddle's doing, since he was the one possessing Quirrell's body? Or was it my mum and the strange magical protection she gave me? Again, I don't know and neither do the scholars. (As an added bonus I was almost eaten by both a mountain troll and a Cerberus.)

Year Two: I killed a thousand year-old basilisk with a thousand year-old sword. (Plus I was almost got eaten by a whole colony of giant spiders. The fact that they spoke perfect English somehow made the experience even worse.)

Year Three: I repelled a massive horde of soul-sucking Dementors with my Patronus Charm. Like I said, I am a very powerful wizard. (Plus I was almost eaten by a werewolf who happened to be one of my father's closest friends.)

Year Four: I competed in the Triwizard Tournament against my will, I saw a fellow student named Cedric Diggory murdered right in front of me, and I fought a nasty duel against Tom Riddle. (Plus I was almost eaten by a dragon. Are you seeing a pattern here? I sorry to keep harping on this line of trivia, but almost being eaten by several huge monsters gave me vivid nightmares for decades.)

Year Five: I was shanghaied into teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts to students who were bloody older than me. And I was tortured by one of my professors. As a grand finale I walked into an ambush that cost me the life of my godfather Sirius Black. (Plus I was almost eaten by a giant who happened to be the brother one of my favorite professors.)

Year Six: Dumbledore was murdered—also right in front of me. Other than that nothing much happened, but I was almost eaten by a lake full of Inferi.

Year Seven: I won the Battle of Hogwarts. You may think that sounds conceited of me considering the fact that many others fought and died in the battle, but I stand by my statement. I will admit that Dumbledore is the one who set the trap for Riddle, but I'm the one who made the trap work. If the so-called Dark Lord hadn't died that day, he and his Death Eaters would have ultimately won the war. And that would have been a disaster, considering the events which occurred in the muggle world a few years later. (Plus I was almost eaten by another dragon, although that was at Gringotts in London.)

Yes, all of that stuff really did happen. As you can see, my years at Hogwarts were a nightmare.

* * *

Maybe I'm not being entirely fair. It wasn't all bad. Let's break out a Time Turner, and run through those seven years again.

Year One: I met Hedwig, the first and greatest friend I ever had. That wonderful owl sacrificed her life for me, and we weren't even the same species. I got my first wand and I cast my first spell. I also met Ron Weasley, who was the brother I never had, and Hermione Granger. My Hermione. After all these years I still can't put into words what she means to me. I also flew for the first time, and the there is only one thing better than flying on a broom—but I didn't learn that until the end of my seventh year.

Year Two: I saved Ginny Weasley's life. It was a rush. Not as good as sex or flying mind you, but a close third. If you ever get a chance, save someone's life. Trust me, I've saved a ton of lives, and it's worth the risk.

Year Three: I met my godfather Sirius Black and saved him from certain death. (Again, it was a rush.) He was actually a bit of a wanker when I got to know him, but I loved him anyway. I also produced my first Patronus Charm, which is a stag like my father's Animagus form. That magical and spiritual connection to James Potter meant a great deal to me, and it still does to this day.

Year Four: I danced with a beautiful witch for the first time. I saw Fleur Delacour in a wet swimsuit, which was an important milestone in my sexual development. I won the Triwizard Tournament (by default), a fact which I'm secretly proud of. Outflying a dragon, swimming to the bottom of a Scottish loch in the middle of February, and making my way through a dangerous magical maze—it was impressive showing for an inexperienced fourteen year-old wizard. But then Riddle and Wormtail had to go and ruin everything.

Year Five: I shouldn't have been teaching my fellow students how to defend themselves against Death Eaters, but it was a rich and rewarding experience. I had my first real kiss with Cho Chang. (Sweet Merlin, she was beautiful. Even when she was crying she was beautiful.) I became real friends with Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood. When you finally read this Ron will have been dead for several hundred years, so I can safely tell you that Neville later took his place as my best friend. And Luna... I can't even describe my relationship with Hermione, so how can I begin to describe my relationship with Luna, which is even more emotional confusing.

Year Six: I kissed Ginny. For hours at a time. The witch has her faults, but her skill at kissing isn't one of them. She is aggressive, but not too aggressive—if that makes any sense to you.

Year Seven: I accidentally killed Tom Riddle. I know it will make me sound like a horrible person and not at all like a proper hero, but I enjoyed it. And I won't hesitate to do it again.

* * *

There was another great milestone in my seventh year that the historians always neglect to mention. And it was important not just for me, but for the entire world—both magical and muggle. The Battle of Hogwarts was finally over, and the many dead were being gathered together to lie in state in the Great Hall. Among them were Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, Colin Creevey, and Severus Snape. Do those names mean anything to you? I hope they do, but I can't help but wonder.

For the sake of my story the most important casualty from the Battle of Hogwarts was Fred Weasley. It appeared to me that Ginny wasn't taking the loss of her brother well. Her eyes were so fierce, like she was looking for someone to kill or maybe just torture. When she saw me enter the Great Hall she came marching straight towards me. I admit that at first I was a little worried. Did she blame me for Fred's death? Was she going to end it between us?

I should have been so lucky.

Instead she dragged me out of the Great Hall without a word, and up the stairs to the empty Gryffindor Tower. As we passed through the common room I finally figured out what was going on, and the butterflies started attacking my stomach in earnest. Once the door to my old dorm room was locked with a spell, Ginny began to undress, again without a word. I was too nervous to actually do anything but stand there like an idiot, so she had to start undressing me as well. (Which wasn't easy, since I was already sporting a painful erection.) Once we were both naked we awkwardly laid down on my old bed.

For a minute I just rested on my elbow and looked at her. Ginny was short, but her legs were long in proportion to the rest of her body. Her waist-to-hip ratio was mathematically perfect. (At least that's what the muggle scientists claim, and I believe them.) Her red pubic hair fanned-out across the bottom of her flat stomach in the most pleasing way. Lying on her back made her small breasts almost disappear, but given my lack of experience I thought they were just the right size. I also had a rare weakness for the many freckles that dusted her cheeks and nose.

But it was her brown eyes that finally pushed me over the edge. I didn't mean to enter her mind with Legilimency, but I did. And what I found there was lust. Raw lust. She wanted me just as much as I wanted her, and thanks to my lousy childhood I couldn't believe that was possible. Like I said it pushed me over the edge. I entered her like a thoughtless beast, and it was all over in a matter of seconds. Afterwards I was racked by guilt, and when I saw the blood on the white bed sheets I was ready to die for a the second time that night.

Ginny could read the painful emotions playing across my face, and she spoke just the right words in just the right tone of voice: "Harry, I'm fine."

"I didn't want to hurt you."

"You could never hurt me."

She was lying, but I didn't know that then. Instead her simple words filled me with joy. So much joy that we had sex four more times that night after Ginny cast a minor healing charm on herself. My performance didn't improve much, but we were both too young to notice or care.

Ron and Hermione found us early the next morning. I was expecting an explosion from my friend, but for once Ron kept his temper. It turns out he had spent the night with Hermione, and he couldn't bring himself to be that much of a hypocrite. After a painful awkward conversation we headed down to the Hogwarts kitchen for breakfast with the house-elves. The four of us never talked about what happened after the Battle of Hogwarts again.

I, on the other hand, spent years pondering that fateful night in Gryffindor Tower, and how it changed the course of my life.

I knew Ginny wanted to be my wife, and that she was desperate. And she had good reason to be. After all, I was the one who had gone running off with Hermione and Ron for almost a year, and Ginny was terribly jealous of them both. (Which isn't as strange as it sounds. The idea that we were a trio in every sense of the word was a popular theory at the time. It still is in certain circles.) There was also Gabrielle Delacour and Cho Chang and even Luna waiting in the wings. Ginny knew she had to move fast, since my miraculous victory over Tom Riddle would only bring me more female admirers. She knew I was vulnerable thanks to the recent battle, so she made her move.

Maybe that sounds too cold-blooded to you. You could argue that we were just two teenagers in love, and that's what teenagers have done since time immemorial. That is true. You could also argue that the recent loss of our loved ones left us in a state of emotional turmoil, and that we were just two lost souls reaching out for a connection in the cold night. Again, that is true.

But only to a limited degree. At its heart that night in Gryffindor Tower was about Ginny staking a claim to me that no other witch would be able to challenge.

I'm sorry for going into all this tawdry detail, but the fact that two teenagers lost their virginities really is important in this case. Why exactly? Because Ginny's plan worked just like she hoped it would. After that night I belonged to her. (With a few notable exceptions I will tell you about later on.) That also meant I belonged to the Weasley family, and they belonged to me. I didn't know it at the time, but with that clan of insane gingers at my back I would soon begin my slow rise to global power.

But what the bloody historians could never understand is that was all an accident.

Well, at least it was an accident on my part.


	2. Chapter 2

The eleven years after the Battle of Hogwarts are often referred to by the historians as my "Years in Obscurity" or my "Years in the Wilderness" or some other such nonsense. Idiots, the lot of them. At the start of those years I hadn't even completed my magical education, but by the end of those years I was the Head Auror of Great Britain and an Ambassador to the International Confederation of Wizards.

How did this rise to power happen? Do you think those exalted titles just dropped on my head from out of the sky? I can assure you they did not. It took a lot of hard work to get me to the ICW at such a young age. I grant you that I didn't do all that work by myself, but it wasn't as easy as others have depicted it. Nor was my rise without cost—both to myself and to those around me.

* * *

What initially got the Golden Snitch flying was a funeral and a great deal of Firewhiskey. The day after the Battle of Hogwarts we all gathered at the Burrow (the ancestral home of the Weasley family) to bury poor Fred. Funerals. They're awful, aren't they? The only way to deal with them is to get drunk out of your mind, so that's what the younger generation did after Arthur finished with his beautiful eulogy that warm and sunny May afternoon.

As we passed a third bottle of Firewhiskey around the table set up in the garden behind the Burrow, everyone was looking for a safe topic of conversation. No one wanted to talk about Fred or how his sudden death was affecting us emotionally, so a number of lame topics were offered up. Ron even tried talking about Quidditch until his brother Charlie slapped him upside the head. It was Percy of all people who came to our rescue when he mentioned the current state of affairs at the Ministry of Magic.

"So is Kingsley Shacklebolt really taking over as the new Minister of Magic?" Bill asked as he rested his scarred chin on top of Fleur's perfect blonde hair. (People use to say that Ginny and I were an attractive couple, but without question Bill and Fleur had us beat. They could have made a fortune selling erotic pensieve memories.) "Is anyone challenging him for the top job?"

"No, he is running unopposed," Percy replied. "The Wizengamot is scheduled to hold a vote tomorrow."

"Wait a second, the bloody Wizengamot is still running things in London?" I asked with a mixture of shock and horror. "They're the same ones who passed all those vile pureblood laws Riddle wanted, so why would they vote for Kingsley of all people?"

"Now that You-Know-Who is dead, even the hardliners recognize the need for new and more moderate leadership."

"And we are just trusting them to do the right thing?"

Percy shrugged his shoulders. "Basically."

"Well dammit, that's not good enough," I declared. (I've never been able to hold my liquor, and that afternoon was no exception.) "Those wankers in the Wizengamot almost shipped me off to Azkaban when I was fifteen years old. The only reason they didn't was because Dumbledore came in at the last minute, and intimidated Fudge and Umbridge. No, if we want real change we need a new Wizengamot. So how do we do about getting one?"

Everyone turned to look at Percy again, who puffed up under all the attention. "Shacklebolt could legally call for new elections once he is sworn into office, but the same pureblood candidates would just win reelection like they always do. Having the right surname and the right friends gets you a lot of votes in our provincial world."

"We could run our own slate of candidates," Hermione suggested as she nestled underneath Ron's arm. "We could publish a political platform promising several much-needed reforms. That should win us at least some votes from the average witch and wizard."

"And who would these candidates be?" Neville asked. He had stayed behind after the funeral because his grandmother was still inside talking with the other so-called adults.

"You and Harry would have to be at the top of the slate," Hermione replied at once. "And don't either of you start whining. If this has any chance of working the "Heroes of Hogwarts" will have to play your parts. No matter how much you both despise politics, politicians, and public speaking."

She was right—I was getting ready to start whining like an obnoxious teenager. Instead I shut my mouth and thought about the idea for a while. I had just killed Riddle, so I would never be as popular with the public as I was right at that moment. If I wanted to change things for the better, now was the time to act.

"What other candidates do you have in mind?" I finally asked.

"Our dad should run for a seat," Ginny offered. Even at that early stage she was encouraging me to think of her father as my father, but I didn't mind. It was impossible not to love Arthur Weasley. "And Mr Lovegood should run too."

Luna had been sitting next to me and staring off into space for the most part, but when she heard her father mentioned her gray eyes suddenly became razor-sharp. "Ginny, I think that would be a mistake. He almost got Harry, Hermione, and Ron captured by the Death Eaters."

"Riddle was after your father because of the anti-Ministry articles he was publishing in the _Quibbler_," I told her. "He was only cooperating with the Death Eaters to protect you, and I would never hold that against him. Or against you. No matter what comes, we'll always be friends."

"Thank you," Luna whispered as she began to tear up.

Everyone could see the poor witch's embarrassment, and it was George who came to her rescue. "I nominated Mundungus Fletcher for a seat in the Wizengamot."

Everyone laughed a bit too loudly at his poor joke.

"I'm being serious," George continued. "He's a pureblood, and he fought for the Order of the Phoenix during the war. Plus he's a thief, which means he would be a natural as a politician."

"Hestia Jones and Elphias Doge were also pureblood members of the Order of the Phoenix," Bill said. "Add them to the list."

Hermione really was writing down a list on a piece of parchment she found somewhere in her Mokeskin pouch. "What about Professor McGonagall?"

I nodded. "Dumbledore was the Headmaster of Hogwarts and the Chief Warlock at the same time, so that makes sense. Put her down along with Andromeda Tonks and Susan Bones. They both lost loved ones during the war, and serving in the Wizengamot would be a fitting form of compensation."

"Mrs Tonks should run as Andromeda Black," Percy suggested. "That is a name to conjure with, and it would win her a large number of conservative votes."

"Do you really think this will work?" Ron asked his older brother as he gently ran his hand up and down Hermione's back.

"I honestly don't know, but it's worth a shot."

* * *

Of course there was more to it than that. We went inside to talk to adults, who were skeptical to say the least. Especially poor Andromeda. Even so, Kingsley decided to broach the subject with the muggle Prime Minister during their first meeting at Downing Street later that week. It seemed that Tony Blair loved the idea of a more progressive Wizengamot, and he spent the next six hours giving Kingsley political advice. The new Minister of Magic then sent me a Patronus message, demanding a private meeting in Number Four, Privet Drive of all places.

"Why did we have to meet here?" I asked as we sat down on a park bench across the street from my childhood home. Being in the old neighborhood brought back a flood of memories—all of them bad.

"Because it's a place we both know, and because I don't want any wizards or witches eavesdropping on this conversation," Kingsley snapped. "Now are you and Neville Longbottom really serious about his scam of yours?"

"It's not a scam. And yes, we are serious. The Wizengamot is hopelessly corrupt, and it must change. If things stay the way they are, then another war will break out at some point down the road. You can't deny that."

"Potter, calm down. I think this idea of yours makes sense... in theory. But it's just that I don't see how we can win a fight on this kind of terrain. The pureblood families more political and economic power than you realize."

"We won the war. That should count for something."

"Maybe," Kingsley allowed as he leaned back on the bench. "By the way, I spoke with Narcissa Malfoy yesterday. She seemed convinced that you would keep her son and husband out of Azkaban. Why is that?"

I briefly explained how Tom Riddle had tried to kill me out in the Forbidden Forest during the Battle of Hogwarts. He then asked Narcissa to check if I was truly dead. Of course I wasn't, but she lied right to the face of her great Dark Lord. The witch did for her own selfish reasons, but that didn't matter.

"... so technically I do owe her a Life Debt, but I could care less about her son Draco. And as for Lucius... I'm actually looking forward to his execution. He certainly has it coming."

"Dumbledore told the Order of the Phoenix about his role in the Chamber of Secrets fiasco," Kingsley said. "But I have to be honest with you: if we execute Lucius Malfoy, the purebloods will revolt against my new government. Maybe not right away, but soon. Probably within a year or two."

"What if our new candidates are elected to the Wizengamot? Won't that make enough of a difference in the political landscape?" I asked.

"I doubt it. I've been studying the election laws since the funeral, and those laws are heavily rigged in favor of the incumbents. Even if everything goes our way in the polling booths, we'll still have less than majority when the new Wizengamot is sworn into office. I'm afraid if I want to keep my job I'm going to have to cut a deal with Malfoy and the other Death Eaters, just like Dumbledore did after the last war."

* * *

Those words filled my stomach with acid, and for one very specific reason. Lucius had almost killed Ginny during his plot against Arthur and his pro-muggle legislation back during my second year at Hogwarts. If Ginny had died, I wouldn't currently be having sex with her. Therefore Lucius deserved to die. No, Lucius _had _to die. In my mind it was a moral imperative.

I know. That sounds awful. Even to me.

All I can say in my defense is that I wasn't in control of my emotions. For seventeen years the only physical contact I had with other human beings was an occasional hug from Hermione, and a handful of snogging sessions with Cho and Ginny. Now I was have sex several times a day, and it was wonderful. (I would say Ginny and I were going at it like rabbits, but I have a feeling rabbits would've been insulted by the comparison.) It was clear to me—if no one else—that Lucius was still a threat to Ginny, and there was nothing I wouldn't do to protect my lover and future wife.

Nothing at all.

That was what was going through my love-addled mind when I apparated straight from Number Four in Little Whinging to Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire. There was a young Auror on guard duty at the front gate, which wasn't surprising since the Malfoys were under house arrest. He looked about twenty years old, which means we probably went to Hogwarts together. That didn't change the fact that the poor sod was in awe of me.

"You're Harry Potter," he said in a tone worthy of my number-one stalker, Romilda Vane.

"Yes, that's my name. Listen, I want to have a chat with your prisoners. A private chat... if you know what I mean."

"Understood, Sir. You were never here today," the grinning Auror said. He probably thought I was going to get rid of the Death Eater scum, which was fine by him.

I didn't even bother to knock at the massive front door. No, I simply drew Riddle's old phoenix-feather wand, and ripped the beautiful handcrafted antique off its hinges. Then for good measure I tossed it at a nearby marble fountain, smashing them both to pieces.

"Mr Potter, what a pleasant surprise," Narcissa said when she saw me standing in the wreckage of the Manor's entrance hall. She had no choice but to be a polite host, since the Aurors had seized the Malfoys' wands until their upcoming trials. No doubt the three of them had spare wands hidden somewhere, but casting a single spell would mean the end of their house arrest and a trip straight to Azkaban. "Would you care for a cup of tea? Perhaps a cucumber sandwich?"

"Yes, that would be lovely," I replied sarcastically.

We made our way to one of the Manor's many parlours, and were soon joined by Lucius. The war had left him a broken shell of a wizard, but his haggard appearance didn't incite any pity from me.

"Would you care for a lump or two of sugar?" Narcissa asked politely after an old house-elf deposited a silver tea set on the table between us.

"Do you honestly think I would drink or eat anything from your kitchen? In case you've forgotten, Hermione Granger was tortured by your sister Bellatrix in the room right down the hall. You also kept my dear friend Luna Lovegood imprisoned down in your basement dungeon. So no, I don't want any bloody sugar with my bloody tea. Where is your brat Draco?"

"He went out shopping for some new clothes in Diagon Alley with his Aunt Andromeda and his young cousin Teddy," Narcissa explained in a tight voice. "One of the Aurors went with them."

"And you figure if Andromeda pleaded her nephew's case, I would be inclined to listen to her because of my relationship with my godson Teddy Lupin?"

"Something like that."

"You Slytherins can be so transparent at times," I sneered.

My contempt finally roused Lucius from his stupor. "Potter, why did you enter my home without an invitation? And why did you feel the need to destroy my front door?"

I held up Riddle's wand, which I had stolen from his body only seconds after his death. I had earned it, and saw no good reason to hand it over to the Department of Mysteries. The Unspeakables hadn't been of any use during the war.

"Do you recognize this?"

"Boy, you may have the Dark Lord's wand, but you will never be his equal. I saw that duel in the Great Hall, and I know what really happened. Your victory was nothing but another one of Albus Dumbledore's cheap underhanded tricks."

Let's stop right here for a second, because I want to be clear about something: I am deeply ashamed of what happened next. But like I said, I was in love. And the image of Ginny lying seemingly dead on the floor of the Chamber of Secrets kept flashing through my mind.

I also kept seeing the faces of Fred and Remus and Tonks and even poor Colin Creevey. Worst of all was that green light of the Killing Curse as it emerged from the the Elder Wand. The fact that I had sort of died during the Battle of Hogwarts... well, let's just say that it left me with some unresolved issues.

With all this anger boiling-up inside of me, lashing out at the pureblood arse sitting in front of me seemed like the right thing to do. In an instant I summoned all of my considerable magic, and I cast a Cruciatus Curse so powerful it picked Lucius up off that green silk sofa and sent him flying across the parlour. His body hit the wall at such a speed that it left a hole in one of the talking portraits.

Of course the coward screamed like a newborn banshee, and so did Narcissa. That only made me more angry.

"Did you really think you were going to walk away unscathed like you did last time?" I snarled as I marched across the room. "Are you that stupid? Crucio!"

"You owe me a Life Debt!" Narcissa screamed as I tortured her defenseless husband, but she was too terrified to interfere.

Looking back after all these years I honestly can't tell you why I didn't turn Lucius into a drooling vegetable that day. Maybe I feared becoming a monster like Tom Riddle. Or maybe I was afraid of being sent to Azkaban and being separated from Ginny again. Whatever the reason was, I did stop at some point.

Lucius was still convulsing violently when Narcissa rush to his side. "Potter, you owe me a Life Debt!" she shouted again.

"I know, so this is what going to happen next: I'm going to allow your husband to do the honorable thing and commit suicide."

"You're insane," Lucius said through chattering teeth.

"Maybe, but then so are you," I replied. "You and your Master kept playing your ridiculous games, and you kept losing to an inexperienced and stupid Gryffindor like me. But now your time is up. Now you are going to pay for the many crimes you committed as a Death Eater. You are going to pay for almost killing Ginny Weasley."

"And if I refuse to do the honorable thing, as you call it?"

"Then I will burn down this Manor to the ground. And once that's done I will use all of my influence as the Boy-Who-Lived to have your vault at Gringotts seized and stripped bare. Finally and most importantly I will kill Draco right in front of you, and there is nothing you or anyone else will be able to do to stop me."

I made these threats with such absolute conviction that Lucius and Narcissa knew I would carry them out. And they were right to believe. The Harry Potter standing in their parlour was pretty much insane thanks to the Battle of Hogwarts.

"However if you coöperate than Draco gets to live, which means your precious Malfoy family won't vanish into the ash heap of history. Your descendants will have all the wealth you and your ancestors have stolen for them over the centuries. You just won't be around to see them grow-up. You know, sort of like how my parent James and Lily weren't around for me. This is a better deal than a criminal like you deserves, but I do owe your wife a Life Debt. And I swear to Merlin that this is the only way I intend to repay that Debt."

"How do I know you will keep your word?" Lucius asked. "How do I know you will be able to control the Minister of Magic? Shacklebolt is a powerful wizard."

"You were there in the graveyard when I faced your Dark Lord at the end of the Triwizard Tournament. You were there in the Forbidden Forest and in the Great Hall when I faced him again and again. My honor is not in doubt. What about your honor? Will you sacrifice yourself for your only son and heir? Or are you nothing more than the sniveling toady who kissed the feet of half-blood bastards like Tom Riddle?"

For several long seconds Lucius and I just stared at each other. Was he using Legilimency on me? I think so, because a look of resignation came over his face. He knew that one way or another his life was over. All he could do now was save Draco.

"Narcissa, go to the potion lab and get a vial of concentrated belladonna."

"Please tell me you don't intend to go through with this madness."

"You know the Dark Lord's many punishments during the war have destroyed my health. I will be lucky to last another ten years, and during those years I will be little more than a cripple. The belladonna will induce heart failure, and Draco will be none the wiser. Trust me Cissy, Potter is a Gryffindor with a Gryffindor's insufferable conscience. If I do this he will keep his word and leave our son alone."

Out of some perverse need I stayed and watched. I watched as Narcissa wept, and I watched as Lucius drank the vial of poison. And I watched as the life slowly ebbed away from his eyes.

Afterwards I apparated to the rooftop of my old muggle school in Surrey. There I vomited up the contents of my stomach. To be honest it seemed like I was vomiting up everything I had ever eaten. Our Professors at Hogwarts warned us that using the Dark Arts corrupted your immortal soul. And now—after it was already too late—I finally understood what they were trying to tell us.

What an arrogant young fool I was back in those days.

There on that abandoned and dirty muggle rooftop I swore I would never use the Cruciatus Curse again, and I never did. Nor did I ever use the Imperius Curse. As for worst Unforgivable Curse of them all? As for the Killing Curse? I use that just one time... many, many years later. But we haven't reached that part of my story yet.

Draco, Merlin bless his empty head, always believed his father had died of natural causes. The other Death Eaters and their families weren't so naïve. They quickly figured out the message I was sending: if the Death Eaters chose suicide their families (and their family fortunes) would be left alone.

Some wizards like Theodore Nott's elderly father voluntarily ended their own lives. Other had that choice made for them by their not-so-loving families. Gregory Goyle's father "accidentally" slipped on a wet dining room floor, and broke his neck. The Goyle family house-elf was starved to death as a punishment.

After a few weeks the worst of the Death Eaters were gone for the most part, but that didn't mean our political problems were over. Far from it. The "Next Generation of Evil"— as Hermione often called them—were just as prejudiced against muggleborns as the old Death Eaters, and they fought our political reforms tooth and nail. Still, it was better than another war.

* * *

My campaign for the Wizengamot wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. That was mostly because of the presence of the new Golden Trio, as they later came to be known. There was Neville Longbottom, the tall and handsome and dashing hero who yielded the mighty Sword of Gryffindor in battle. And then there was Susan Bones, the niece of the Great Fallen Hero, Amelia Bones. She was so kind and pretty and buxom. And finally there was Hannah Abbot, who was even more kind and more pretty and more buxom. Everyone who met the Golden Trio that summer fell in love with them, and a year later when they began their odd triangle marriage no one raised an eyebrow.

Of course Ginny and I were also a great draw in public. Dozens of older witches told us how much we reminded them of James and Lily Potter, which was kind of creepy. Alright, it was very creepy. Like any budding politician I had to kiss babies in Diagon Alley and Hogsmeade. Only I wasn't just kissing them. No, in the minds of their parents I was blessing their children with my magic. They treated me as if I were great Merlin reborn, and that fact was creepiest of them all.

There was also an endless number of speeches, which I hated. (And still do to this day.) There were mass rallies and free concerts by the Weird Sisters. The _Quibble_r became our main propaganda arm, but we still brought plenty of ads in the _Daily Prophet_ and on the Wizarding Wireless just to be on the safe side. (Aberforth Dumbledore supplied the galleons needed to buy those ads—it seems that Albus left his younger brother a sizable inheritance.) Campaign posters of Neville and me were plastered on walls everywhere, which was mortifying. I couldn't wait for the nightmare to end.

When the dust settled after the election, the New Equality Party (Hermione chose the name) received sixty-five percent of the vote, which translated into just over twenty seats in the Wizengamot. The pureblood hardliners received barely fifteen percent of the vote. However thanks to a very corrupt set of election laws they also won about twenty seats. Don't ask me how they did it. Percy tried to explain the concept of a "rotten borough" to me, but I started tuning him out after the first couple of minutes.

That muggle poet Shakespeare had the right idea: "_The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". _My thoughts exactly.

Now in those early days the Wizengamot had about fifty members in total, so what party did those other ten or twelve members belong to? They called themselves the "Independent Wizards", but in reality they were the wealthy business wizards of the magical Britain. They weren't barbarians like the old Death Eaters, but they still disliked the muggleborn. And they especially disliked the muggles, whom they saw as economic rivals they couldn't hope to compete with in a free and fair market.

"These wizards hold the balance of power in the Wizengamot, so we have to make peace with them," Kingsley told me a few days after the election.

The Minister of Magic never asked me how I dealt with Lucius Malfoy and the other Death Eaters, but he knew I must have done _something_. Now he wanted me to work my mojo again. But what Kingsley could never understand is that it was all just an accident on my part. I never had a master plan or a grand strategy. I went after Lucius Malfoy for purely personal lessons, and it was just blind luck that it worked out so well from a political point of view. I had no idea the other Death Eaters were so afraid of me, or that their families would turn against them. I guess the purebloods were tired of all the violence too, and they just wanted to live out their lives in peace.

Like I said, Kingsley didn't know any of this because I was too ashamed to admit what I had done out at Malfoy Manor. This lack of communication meant he expected me to pull another miracle out of my arse. I didn't handle the pressure he was putting me under very well.

"Bloody hell, I got twenty members of the New Equality Party elected to the Wizengamot. What else do you want from me?"

"Andrew Parkinson has invited you to lunch. I need you to go and listen to what he has to say."

"What will that accomplish?"

"I'm not really sure, but he is the richest member of the Independent Wizards. He's not their leader _per se_, but he does have a great deal of influence and I think the others will follow his lead. If there is even a chance you can make a private deal with him, you have to take it."

"What else can you tell me about him? Is he related to Pansy Parkinson?"

Kingsley gave me a sickly smile. He had only been the Minister of Magic for a month, but he already looked dreadful. "She is his only child."

Even I could see where this was going. "No, not in a million years. Not in two million years. Ginny and I are getting married. But even if Pansy was the last witch on Earth, there is still no way I would shag Draco Malfoy's sloppy seconds for the sake of bloody politics."

(I'm normally not that misogynistic, but in the heat of the moment that's what I said to poor Kingsley.)

"Parkinson is a brilliant and well-informed wizard. I'm sure he already knows about your relationship with Miss Weasley, so I'm betting that he has something other than a marriage contract up his sleeve. Just meet with him. And try to be polite, this is important."

"Fine, but don't get your hopes up."

* * *

In turns out Kingsley would have lost his bet, because a marriage contract was exactly what Pansy's father had up his well-tailored sleeve. Oh, Parkinson didn't just throw a piece of parchment down on the table when we met at an exclusive restaurant in Diagon Alley. No, he was a handsome and charming wizard with a gift for small talk. So much so that I found myself wondering if Pansy's mother had an affair with the late Professor Severus Snape. It would explain a lot about the vile little witch.

After about an hour of chitchat and a delicious dragon steak, I started to get annoyed and decided to cut to the chase. "You invited me here for a reason Mr Parkinson, and I doubt it was because you wanted to discuss the next Quidditch World Cup or the ongoing repairs at Hogwarts."

"Please forgive me. I forgot that I was dealing with such a young wizard."

"Funny, you don't strike me as the type that forgets anything." That comment earned me a one of those slimy Slytherin smirks.

"As you may or may not know, my daughter was betrothed to Draco Malfoy. However because of Lucius Malfoy's recent death that is no longer the case."

"Why is that?" I asked. "For some reason Pansy seems rather fond of Draco."

"Because without Lucius' leadership the Malfoy family is finished as a power here in Britain," the older wizard replied bluntly. "My daughter will inherit one of the largest fortunes in Europe, and I have no intention of seeing that fortune in the hands of a political nonentity like young Draco. You on the other hand are a rising power in the our world. With the right backing—with _my_ backing to be precise—you're sure to rise straight to the top."

That did make sense, in a Slytherin sort of way. Tom Riddle had been a confirmed bachelor, which meant marrying your daughter off to the son of the Dark Lord's second-in-command was the best deal available for any respectable social climber. Now that both wizards were dead, Parkinson was out shopping for a new deal. Hence this lunch.

"I don't know what Pansy has told you about our years together at school, but she hates me. And to be honest the feeling is mutual."

"That is irrelevant. My daughter will do as she is told," Parkinson said coldly. "And I'm sure you'll do what's best for your political future."

"Even if that means marrying a witch that I don't love or even like?"

"Harry my boy, marriage isn't about love. It's about producing heirs, and giving those heirs every possible advantage in life. As for your emotional and physical needs: that's what Veela mistresses are for. I have two eighteen year-olds on retainer, but I'm thinking about trading them in for a younger pair soon."

By that point my blood was running hot, mostly because the wanker reminded me of both my Uncle Vernon and Draco at their worst. But lashing out in anger like I had with Lucius wasn't an option, especially since we were in a public restaurant. Nor could I afford make an enemy of Parkinson, since he controlled the bloody balance of bloody power in the Wizengamot. That meant it was time to improvise.

"I'm not marrying Pansy, but I'm willing to make her a part of my family. My sister-in-law... to be precise."

Parkinson wrinkled his nose in distaste. "One of the Weasley boys I imagine? That's not what I had in mind."

"Arthur Weasley was been appointed as the Deputy Minister of Magic, and he speaks for the New Equality Party during Wizengamot debates. And Molly Weasley killed that psychotic bitch Bellatrix Lestrange in a duel. I'm curious Andrew my boy, could you have killed Bellatrix Lestrange in a duel?"

He said nothing, which was an answer all by itself.

"The Weasleys may not be rich in galleons, but they are an intelligent and magically powerful family. From what I've seen of your daughter at Hogwarts, she has been blessed with neither one of those traits. Traits which are far more valuable than mere galleons in my opinion. Don't you agree?"

"You're not bad at this for a Gyffindor. Which one of these redheaded wonders do you have in mind?"

"Percy," I replied. "He was Head Boy at Hogwarts, so you know he's brilliant. He is also very ambitious, which means you two should get along just fine with each other."

"And if Pansy becomes your sister-in-law, my business partners and I will be left alone by the Ministry of Magic in the future?"

"As long as you don't discriminate against the muggleborn in your business deals, I don't care what you or your partners do."

"I will have to check with the others, but I think we can live with that type of laissez-faire arrangement. Personally I've found working with the muggleborn to be profitable at times."

Once I left the restaurant I went straight to the Ministry. There I found Percy buried behind a mountain of paperwork in his small office. Somehow I talked him into accepting the marriage contract.

Or maybe he talked me into it.

Percy understood the current political situation far better than I did, so he know what was at stake. Plus there was the fact that he would become one of the wealthiest wizards in Europe if he agreed to the marriage. That did make the bitter pill go down easier.

"I can't believe we're doing this," I muttered as the enchanted paper aeroplanes kept buzzing around my head. "I know that killing Riddle was a big deal, but why is it so important for a wizard like Parkinson to get his hooks into me?"

Percy laughed, which was a sound I hadn't heard in years. "You do realize that with Dumbledore and You-Know-Who dead, you are now the most politically powerful wizard in Britain?"

I bristled. "What about Kingsley?"

"He is viewed as a transitional figure at best. Everyone thinks he is just keeping the big chair warm for you."

"That's bloody great. Look, are you sure you want to go through with this? If you don't, we can just find another way to deal with Parkinson and his rich friends."

Percy put his hands behind his head and looked off into the distance. "You know, I think being married to a Slytherin might make my life a good deal easier."

"But Pansy?"

"Come on Harry, you've must have noticed how she strutted down the hallways at Hogwarts. School robes hide a lot, but not that much."

He had a point. Pansy was a bigoted snob—and she was no one's idea of a great beauty—but I had a feeling she be a delightful partner in bed. Or up against the nearest wall.

(Ginny loved having one up against the wall. Loved it. And some people still wonder why I married her.)

The marriage contract caused an uproar with both Mrs Parkinson and Mrs Weasley (and Ron), but Percy refused to back down. He and Pansy signed the paperwork with a blood quill on my nineteenth birthday. That's right. I was just nineteen years-old and I had already killed a Dark Lord, driven several wizards to suicide, founded a new political party, been elected to the Wizengamot, and sold my future brother-in-law off into marriage.

And these were suppose to be my Years in Obscurity?


	3. Chapter 3

Looking back at history, spotting critical turning points seems easy enough for most people. The assassination of an Archduke in Sarajevo led to the start of the muggles' First World War. You know, things like that. However when you are living in the middle of all that tumultuous history, it's easy to miss them. That was certainly the case with Percy and Pansy's wedding. It was one of the great turning points in my life. But I was too busy with other, more trivial matters to notice it at the time.

What kind of trivial matters? The "trying to save Pansy from her own wedding" kind. Ever since I first suggested a marriage alliance between the Potter and Parkinson families to her father, I had been racked by feelings of guilt. I even had nightmares about the whole mess. Not only was I ruining Percy's life, but Pansy's too since I thought she was in love with Draco Malfoy. I felt I had to do something. Something like sneaking into the witch's lavish bedroom under my Invisibility Cloak to "save" her on the morning before the wedding.

(In case you were wondering, everything at the Parkinson's endless mansion was lavish. Even the loos. Pinching out a loaf on a seat made of solid gold—it's not a comfortable experience. Especially when you have a bony arse like mine.)

"Potter, what in the name of Merlin are you doing here?" Pansy asked when I appeared out of nowhere.

For a moment I was too preoccupied to answer her question. The fact that her wand was pointed at me wasn't the problem. No, Pansy herself was the problem. She was wearing nothing but a lacy set of white knickers, and she was wearing them well. The pug nose was still Trollish, but the rest of her Exceeded Expectations. Not Outstanding, but close.

_Maybe Percy does know what he's getting into_, I thought.

"Er... I'm here to help you escape," I told her once my eyes stopped wandering over her shapely body. "I can take you to Malfoy Manor, if that's what you want."

"Why would I want to go to Malfoy Manor?"

"I don't know? Maybe because you're hopelessly in love with that blonde prat Draco?"

"Potter, I know the Dark Lord and his minions damaged your little brain, but this is ridiculous."

"His name was Tom Riddle, and I'm being serious. If you want out of this wedding, I swear I will help you in any way I can."

"You're such an idiot. I was never in love with Draco. I was just pretending to be because my father was forcing me to marry the annoying shite. Now I have to marry Ignatius. If I don't, my father will disown me. Then he will divorce my mother, and find a new wife to give him a new heir."

"So you are going through with this just for the galleons?"

"No, I am going through with this for a massive pile of galleons. I have no wish to be poor like my future in-laws. Besides, if could be worse. I could be marrying you."

That stung. It really did. "You'd rather have Percy than me?"

Pansy put down her wand, turned back towards the large oval mirror, and resumed brushing her short black hair. "Ignatius is a reasonable wizard. As long as my father supports your new political party in the Wizengamot, he has agreed not to touch the Parkinson vault at Gringotts. He also agreed that after our two children are born I will be free to take a lover, as long as I'm discreet about it. Which I will be. Flaunting your lover is so plebeian."

"That's outrageous," I sputtered. My Aunt Petunia had raised me to be a middle-class prude, and I found this aristocratic decadence to be offensive. That would soon change.

"And you wonder why I don't want to marry a twit like you," Pansy replied as she continued to brush her hair.

"Fine, if that's the way you feel."

"It is."

I turned to leave, but stopped short. "I'm curious: why are you calling Percy by his middle name?"

"Percy and Pansy Weasley? That's simply ghastly. No, Ignatius and Pansy Parkinson sounds much more pleasing to the ear."

"You expect your husband to change his first and last names?"

"No, Ignatius will do that voluntarily after he reads a copy of my father's last will and testament. Now if you are done leering at me, I think you should leave. The bridesmaids will be arriving soon, and Granger will throw a hissy fit if she finds you in my bedroom. Normally I would find her reaction amusing, but we don't have time for it this morning."

Yes, Hermione—who hated Pansy even more than I did—was one of the bridesmaids for the upcoming wedding. That was another reason I was so distracted. The whole concept of bridesmaids was freaking me out. Bill and Fleur's wedding had been pretty normal. Well, at least as normal as it could be with an insane Dark Wizard waiting out there to kill us all.

Pansy had other ideas though. Her bridesmaids were chosen because they were ugliest witches in Slytherin. The dresses she picked out for them were covered with moving patterns that make you nauseous if you looked at them for more than a few seconds. And their makeup and hair... let's just say that no professional stylist did that bad a job unless she was deliberately trying to humiliate her clients.

We were all shocked when the group of poor witches first appeared in the garden—they looked dreadful. That was especially true for Hermione. My friend had matured into a beautiful witch, but that day her bushy brown hair looked like it was exploding out of her skull in all directions.

"Do you want me to fix it for you?" Fleur asked as they stood around waiting for the ceremony to start. Pansy had given the Veela an ugly old hat crowned with a stuffed crow, and insisted that she it to the wedding.

"No," Hermione growled. "Pansy wants me—the filthy little mudblood—to make a scene, but I won't give her the satisfaction. If this is what she wants her bridesmaids to look like, then that's what she's going to get."

"But why would she do something like this?" I asked.

"For the same reasons we have to wear these stupid hats," Ginny said. Her hat—also a gift from Pansy—was crowned with a stuffed red squirrel. "If all the other witches looked bad, it will make the bride look better in comparison.

"Really? She would sabotage her own wedding party out of spite?"

Hermione nodded. "Muggle women do it too. I've been to several weddings, and the bridesmaids usually look bad. Not as bad as us, but bad enough."

"You look beautiful to me," Ron quickly told her. He had been complaining about the wedding for weeks, but his concern for Hermione finally distracted him. "And nothing Pansy does will ever be able to change that fact."

We all smiled as the pair made lovey-dovey eyes each other, but Ginny's face went blank when she saw her mum berating Mrs Parkinson across the garden. This was the vital clue I should have noticed, but my attention was elsewhere.

To be fair, Molly Weasley wasn't acting particularly out of character as she bellowed at the mother of the bride. She had lived her life as a house-witch on a rundown farm, not as an aristocrat overseeing a mansion with an army of servants. Sure she was loud and overbearing, but raising seven children by herself on the edge of poverty required that kind of personality.

However there among the wealthy élite of the magical Britain she stood out, and not in a good way. At the time I didn't realize how humiliated Ginny was by Molly's crass behavior. Nor did I realize how Pansy's many snide remarks served to amplify those negative feelings. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

Once the bride arrived the ceremony went off like clockwork. The purebloods weren't pagans—in truth they were too narcissistic to follow any religion—but they did like to ape the forms at important occasions like weddings. A colorful "druid" was presiding, several "ancient gods" were invoked, and "offerings" were made. It was farce from beginning to end. A sign of how shallow our culture had become during our long isolation from the muggle world.

* * *

During the year after the wedding three important events occurred in a very convenient order. Back then they all seemed natural enough, and totally unrelated.

**One**, Molly Weasley died of the Dragon Pox. The disease often strikes older witches and wizards, and the recent war had taken a toll on everyone's health. (Plus Molly wasn't exactly in great shape to begin with.) As a result no one—including the healers who treated her at St Mungo's—suspected a thing.

Yet another funeral left us all distraught, but it hit Ginny the hardest. In desperation I proposed to her that night as she wept in my arms, and she accepted. Even now I can't bring myself to regret that rash decision. Having James, Al, and Lily Luna in my life was worth any amount of pain.

**Two**, only six months later Arthur Weasley married Andromeda Tonks. The widower and widow had been thrown together thanks to their relationship with yours truly. I spent hours playing with my godson Teddy on the floor at the Burrow while Arthur and Andromeda retreated to the kitchen for tea and biscuits.

None of the Weasley children objected to their father's quick remarriage. Instead they were all happy for him. I found it a little odd at first, since Arthur was kind of homely and Andromeda was such a beautiful witch. But then I remember that the pudgy Ted Tonks hadn't been handsome either, and thought no more about the subject.

And **three**, the Minister of Magic died four months later of the Vanishing Sickness, which is caused by the poisonous bite of a rare magical insect. Since Kingsley Shacklebolt was a relatively young and healthy wizard the Aurors investigated his death thoroughly, but they found no evidence of foul play. Instead it was ruled a tragic accident.

As a result of these seemingly unrelated events Arthur became the new Minister of Magic. Would that have happened if his first wife Molly—the country bumpkin—was still alive and glued to his side?

Somehow I doubt it.

Instead he now had a new aristocratic wife who knew how to play the role of a pureblood hostess perfectly, which made the transition to his new job much smoother. The newlyweds moved into the renovated Grimmauld Place in London—I signed the deed over to them as a wedding present—and they often threw tasteful dinner parties for the political and economic élite of magical Britain. They were pleasant hosts, and little Teddy's budding abilities as a Metamorphmagus made him a hit with their many guests. Would Arthur have lasted for so many years as the Minister of Magic without Andromeda's loving support?

Somehow I doubt it.

Let me say again that no one suspected a thing while all this was happening, and that included me.

* * *

While Ginny, Luna, and Hermione returned to Hogwarts in the autumn of ninety-eight to complete their educations, Ron and I decided to join the Aurors. The war had decimated the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and they needed wizards who were free of the corruption Tom Riddle had spread throughout Ministry of Magic during his disastrous reign.

The practical side of Auror training was a joy for me. Show me a spell, and I will be able to cast it. Maybe not right away, but there is nothing I can't do with a wand during a duel. Being a natural athlete also helped, as did my size. A small target is harder to hit, and for once in my life as was happy to be shorter than average.

I also did well when we covered the more theoretical aspects of being an Auror in a classroom setting. That Christmas I took the Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWT on a lark, and scored an Exceeds Expectations. Over the years I earned six NEWTs in total, an achievement which never ceases to amaze me.

Ron didn't do nearly as well. He struggled with both the practical work and the theory, but given who his best friend was the trainers let him pass where they might have failed another wizard. Oddly enough he turned out to be a better Auror than I was. Ron loved to shoot the shite, and that's usually the key to good investigative work. I could out-duel any of the criminals we came across in Knockturn Alley, but he was the one who got them to spill their guts during the long interrogations back at the Ministry of Magic.

The next spring after graduation, I married Ginny and Ron married Hermione. The weddings were small and very private affairs. The four of us ended up having the Burrow to ourselves. Arthur had moved to London with Andromeda, Bill lived at his seaside cottage with Fleur, Charlie returned to his dragons in Romania, George lived in the room above his joke shop in Diagon Alley, and Percy moved in with the Parkinsons. He and Pansy had a whole twenty-room wing of the mansion to themselves, complete with a staff of four house-elves. Yes, Percy was clearly the most intelligent of the Weasley brothers.

That short time at the Burrow before the first of the children were born... it was idyllic. That's a terrible thing for a father to say, isn't it? Don't get me wrong, I love my children beyond reason, but the freedom of those years were something I always treasured.

Hermione—ever the idealist—join the Ministry of Magic after graduation, but my wife decided to become a professional Quidditch player for the Harpies. That surprised me, because unlike Ron she wasn't in love with the game. When I asked Ginny about it, her blunt answer was an even bigger surprise.

"I want to make some real galleons before I get pregnant."

"Ginny, you've seen my vault. We're rich."

"I know, but you can never be too rich."

Every time she received her salary (which was the highest on the team) and every time she got another endorsement deal (Mrs Harry Potter had over two dozen in total) we traveled down to my vault at Gringotts and made a deposit. I asked Ginny if she wanted a separate vault, but she refused. Even so, she kept her growing pile of galleons over in one corner away from my larger pile of galleons. And the two piles never intermingled.

The four of us worked hard at our respective careers, so during our rare vacations we indulged ourselves. A well-crafted portkey can take you anywhere in the world in a matter of minutes if you're strong enough to make one. And I am. During those early trips we tried to do and see everything.

Swimming the Great Barrier Reef using gillyweed? Check. Apparating to the top of Mount Everest to take in the stunning view of the Himalayas? Check. Running with the manticores in Pamplona? (It's harder than running with the bulls, and Ron has a wicked scar to prove it.) Check. Exploring the Hidden Pyramids built by the wizards of Egypt and Guatemala and Cambodia? Check, check, check. Hunting down a village-destroying Nundu on the plains of the African Serengeti? Check. Racing on a broom through the Grand Canyon by the light of a full moon? Check. Attending Carnival in Rio de Janeiro? Check. Attending Mardi Gras in New Orléans? Check. Getting drunk on some random tropical beach? Hell, we did that pretty much every weekend Ginny wasn't playing a Quidditch match for the Harpies.

We were young and stupid and we had our magic. And most importantly we had earned it. Or so we believed.

* * *

That youthful arrogance soon lead two of us astray.

Thanks to some blackmail material Hermione had on Parvati Patil, we were able to get four tickets to the Imperial Occamy Races in Uttar Pradesh. The local Maharaja and his predecessors had ruled over the wizards and witches of northern India for two thousand years, and they had bred Occamys for nearly as long. The Maharaja's great social cachet meant the races were one of the premier sporting events of the year—not just for magical India, but for the entire magical world.

Now don't get me wrong, an Occamy is a majestic creäture. The long serpentine neck, the five meter wingspan, the silver beak and talons, the gorgeous feathers... if I had the ability to become an Animagus (which I do not—thanks mum), an Occamy would have been my animal form of choice.

That being said, watching them fly laps around an aerial obstacle course is pretty boring. Everyone knows this, but they still came anyway. Why? Because the Imperial Occamy Races offers you the chance to dress in your finest clothes and wear your most expensive jewelry, and then show those clothes and jewelry off to your jealous rivals. Plus you get to gorge yourself on expensive food and wine at no cost. According to Ron that was the best part of the whole deal.

For me the best part were the saris the Indian witches were wearing. They came in an endless variety of colors and patterns, and they draped over the younger witches in very seductive ways. When Ginny saw my interest in the local dresses she insisted on buying one at the temporary shopping pavilions that surrounded the racing grounds. Hermione rolled her eyes, but she went along too.

The more conservative saris covered a witch's entire body, but one Ginny bought was more daring. The green silk outfit had two distinct parts: one that covered her small breasts and slim arms, and another that fell from her tiny waist down to her feet. The rest of her body was left bare.

Now some wizards are instinctively drawn to a witch's legs, while even more are drawn to a witch's breasts. Others still are suckers for a nice arse. Me? I'm a wizard who loves a sexy midriff. When a flat stomach is on display I can't help but stare. And those gentle curves were a witch's hips narrows to her waist—those curves drive me crazy.

Ginny knew this, so she bought a sari which showed off her firm assets. Like a good husband I leered for a while, but I couldn't help but notice that Hermione also looked good in her periwinkle-blue sari, which was similar in cut to Ginny's. The curve of her hips had grown more pronounced over the years, a fact which she usually hid with baggy clothes and old-fashioned swimsuits. Hermione noticed that I was sizing her up, but she didn't chastise me as was her usual habit. Instead she just smiled.

Luckily Ginny was too drunk to notice our subtle flirting, but to be fair we were all pretty drunk. As the Occamy races continued we stuffed our faces with the exotic dishes and washed them with a wide selection of magical wines. Adding to our good mood was the strange purple haze that hung heavily in the air.

(When I later asked Rolf about that hazy smoke he grinned. "You should consider yourself lucky. When it's purple, you know it's the good stuff." Luna—who was also grinning—agreed with her husband's professional assessment.)

Rather than risk a portkey accident, we brought along our tent for the night. (We had upgraded since our wartime camping trip, and the interior of our new tent was nicer than the old Burrow.) Ron and Ginny barely made it to the loo before they started vomiting. Either the food or the wine (or that purple haze) had disagreed with their delicate constitutions, and the siblings spent twenty minutes praying at the porcelain altar before passing out on the floor. After levitating them into bed, I plopped down on my favorite recliner in the living room. Hermione joined me, and she still had on that damn periwinkle-blue sari.

"We're never coming back to India again," I told her.

"Don't be so melodramatic," Hermione said as she sashayed across the living room. "We enjoyed ourselves, and so did Ron and Ginny... for the most part."

"That's the problem. I think you and I enjoyed yourselves a bit too much today."

"Yes, I know."

That sly look in her brown eyes told me what was going to happen next. The connection we had made earlier in the day was still there, but now it was a hundred times stronger. She wanted me, and to be honest I had wanted her for years. I used to tell people I loved her like a sister, but that was a lie. No, I loved Hermione Jean Granger Weasley in every way imaginable.

Her seduction was swift and silent, but then she didn't need to make much of an effort. Not with me. We made love right there on my recliner with Ron and Ginny passed out in the next room. Afterwards we were both out of breath, and she leaned her sweaty forehead against mine.

"Why?" I asked.

"I love you, Harry. I always have, and I always will. That's why."

"No, you love Ron. You chose Ron. Remember the wedding? I know I do."

"I chose Ron because it was the only way to keep you both in my life. If I had married you, Ron would have broken off contact with us, and I couldn't bear the idea of losing him forever."

Her logic was sound, if morally dubious. But then Hermione had a nasty tendency to think like that. Back during our second year at Hogwarts she stole valuable potion ingredients from the school to brew an illegal batch of Polyjuice Potion. During our third year she used a Time-Turner to help a wanted criminal escape from justice. And during our fifth year she disfigured another student for ratting us out to a teacher. The witch could justify any action if she put her brilliant mind to it.

"So where do we go from here? What does this mean?"

"It means that now I have you both, just like I always wanted," she said with an infuriating smile.

I shook my head. "No, this will never happen again."

Hermione smile grew wider. "Yes, it will. That we shared was so intense, so perfect. You can't deny it. I won't let you."

As usual, she was right. The sex had been more intense than anything I experienced with Ginny. Was it because we had secretly loved each other for so long? Or did the forbidden fruit always taste better? Or were we still under the influence of that purple haze? I can't give you an answer, because I don't know myself.

What I do know is that Hermione and I met in secret once a week without exception until she passed away years later. Thankfully Rose inherited my mother Lily's auburn hair, which was enough to fool Ron. It wasn't enough to fool certain other people though.

My long affair with Hermione, my betrayal of Ron, and the fact that I fathered Rose Weasley (but not Hugo) are three great sins of my life. So why am I telling **you** about them? I have my reasons, and they boil down to the mystery of my endless ambition.

Ginny had always wanted the Boy-Who-Lived, but that wasn't enough for her. I defeated Tom Riddle during the war, but that wasn't enough for her either. No, she wanted more titles, more honors, more of everything for me. It was her destiny to be the wife of the greatest wizard in the entire world, and she wasn't going to settle for anything less.

Hermione wasn't interested in mere titles. Instead she wanted to change the world in more substantive ways. However given the political realities of the magical world that was an impossible goal for a muggleborn witch. She needed a powerful and popular wizard to do the dirty work of pushing her reforms through a corrupt system. That meant she needed me, and now she had me.

Personally I would have been happy to live out my life searching for mythical creatures with a certain blonde witch, but that simple life was now out of reach. Give up Ginny? That I could have done. Give up Hermione? It would have been harder, but I still could have done it. Give them both up at the same time? Never. The scared little boy who had been locked in the cupboard beneath the stairs wouldn't let me. I was trapped by my own insecurities.

That meant I was caught between a pair of ambitious witches who constantly expected more from me. Caught between Scylla and Charybdis, as the poets would say. So you want to know why I driven to do all the insane things I did? There's your bloody answer.

* * *

Every parent thinks their children are special, and that's what I thought at first too. But looking back from old age I can see that wasn't the case. My four children were all above average—perhaps even gifted in Rose's case—but none of them were cursed with greatness like I was. That's why I won't bore you with the details of the next few years of my life. They were important to me and my extended family, but they're irrelevant to you.

As we went through the pregnancies, the deliveries, the nappies, and the late night feedings the political situation in Britain was progressing at a slow but steady pace. Arthur's goal was to drag our primitive government into the twenty-first century, while the purebloods desperately wanted to return to the first century. The fights between the two sides in the Wizengamot were endless and endlessly boring, but we won more than we lost. That was mostly thanks to Susan Bones.

Now the "plan" had been for me to succeed Arthur when he stepped down as the Minister of Magic, but Susan's growing popularity put the kibosh on that. I had quickly risen up through the ranks to the position of Chief Auror, but I wasn't suited for politics. People sensed how uncomfortable I was in public, and they correctly assumed that I didn't want the top job.

Unlike me Susan was a natural at politics, and the other two members of the Golden Trio just enhanced her sunny appeal. Neville was not only the Professor of Herbology at Hogwarts and the Head of House for Gryffindor, but he had also been appointed as the Deputy Headmaster when Sprout became Headmistress after McGonagall's death. Meanwhile Hannah had taken over the Leaky Cauldron, and her job entailed a lot more than being a simple bartender. Everyone who came to Diagon Alley—especially the muggleborns—got a smile and a lot of friendly advice from Hannah Longbottom. She soon became the unofficial mayor of magical London.

The political situation came to a head when my godson Teddy finally went off to Hogwarts. Arthur and Andromeda had lived hard lives, and they wanted to enjoy their retirement while they were still healthy. Arthur was fascinated by the tales of our travels around the world, and Andromeda promised to show him all the muggle tourist traps he dreamed about seeing.

"Dad is going to announce his retirement soon," Ginny told me one night after we put the children to bed.

Another fight with my wife was the last thing I wanted, so I continued to stare out the window at green valley below. After James was born we moved out of the Burrow, and bought a beautiful home in the Lake District. I thought putting some distance between Hermione and me would cool our affair, but even after ten years it was as emotionally and physically intense as ever.

"Harry, I know you despise politics, but Susan isn't up for the job. She's still too young."

"She's seven months older than me."

"Alright, she is too bloody nice," Ginny growled.

"Dad is one of the nicest wizards I know, and he's been a wonderful Minister of Magic. Besides if anyone even thinks about hurting Susan, Neville will stomp all over them and then feed them to his pet Devil's Snare."

"Dammit Harry, you've earned it."

"No, I've earned the right to turn down the bloody job."

The fights went on in this vein for weeks and weeks. Ginny may have despised Molly, but she had inherited all of her mother's stubbornness. Out of desperation I offered her a compromise. Percy came up with the idea, and I went along with it in hopes of saving my marriage. And my sanity.

(Arthur and I were the only ones who still called him Percy. To everyone else he was Ignatius Parkinson. Of course Ginny and her other brothers used the name as a way to take the mickey out of poor Percy. They had a hundred different ways to pronounce "Ignatius", and all of them were insulting. This amused Pansy to no end.)

The direct approach never worked with Ginny, so I had to go at the problem from an angle. One morning I casually sat down for breakfast and mentioned that Ambassador Ogden was being treated at St Mungo's for some unknown illness. (I know, it was another convenient coincidence that I failed to notice. What can I say, I was naïve back then.)

That small bit of gossip was all Ginny needed to hear. "There is no obvious candidate to replace Ogden as the British Ambassador to the International Confederation of Wizards. No obvious candidate but you."

Technically Ginny was a Quidditch reporter for the _Daily Prophet_, but in reality she used her job at the newspaper to gather intelligence for the Potter/Weasley/Parkinson clan. I worked at the Ministry of Magic sixty hours a week, but my wife knew more about what was going on there than I did. George sometimes called her Rita Skeeter Junior, but never to her face. Even he wasn't that brave.

"Knockturn Alley has been quiet for the past few years, so I think I could safely cut back on my hours at the office. And think of all those diplomatic parties we would get to attend in Switzerland."

Ginny didn't particularly like going to parties, but she did like being seen at them. And when our pictures appeared in the newspapers and magazines the next day... that she liked best of all. Her collection of scrapbooks was vast and comprehensive.

The vote in the Wizengamot was a foregone conclusion. The purebloods were thrilled to ship me out of the country, if only for two or three weeks a year.

Being an ambassador to the ICW turned out to be incredibly boring. I mean I thought the Wizengamot was bad, but the ICW was worse. In desperation I designed a charm that temporarily projected a pair of realistic eyes on the front of my glasses. These "eyes" kept moving around and even blinked several times a minute. Between my glasses and a trusty Alarm Clock Charm I was able to get some much-needed sleep during the long and tedious debates.

This trick only failed me once. Instead of waking to a soft humming noise, my ears were assaulted by dozens of screaming wizards and witches all around me.

"What the hell is going on?" I asked the Mexican Ambassador in a groggy voice.

"No one is quite sure," she whispered. "But according to the news reports we just received over the Wizarding Wireless, New Zealand no longer exists."


	4. Chapter 4

Of course you know what happened to New Zealand, since you read about it in your history books. I suppose you know about the confusion and the mass panic that gripped the world—or at least you think you do. But do you know about the sense of relief we felt during those first few hours before the reality of what was going to happen to us set in? Yes, the relief.

Everyone thought we had dodged a major disaster. True, the four and half million inhabitants of New Zealand had died within a matter of hours after Lake Taupo let loose, but it could have been much worse. If a volcanic eruption of that size had occurred somewhere in the United States or Japan the death toll could have easily topped a hundred million. Luckily—we told ourselves—New Zealand was isolated by thousands of kilometers of ocean, and the prevailing winds carried most of the ash to the east, out over the empty Pacific.

My fellow ambassadors at the ICW were particularly smug as the news reports continued to come in over the Wireless. The magical population of New Zealand was small, and most of them lived on the south island down in the Otago Region. This distance allowed the wizards and witches to escape to Australia by portkey as the massive downpours of ash began to blanket everything in sight. Sadly those few who lived on the north island died along with the muggles when the pyroclastic flows obliterated everything in their path.

We spent hours debating what to do next—sweet Merlin, how those old fossils loved to hear themselves talk. Around midnight local time they realized there was nothing the ICW could do about the Lake Taupo eruption, so everyone decided to return to their respective countries. We would reconvene in two days after we had gathered more information.

To my horror I discovered an empty house waiting for me back in Britain. After a short but frantic search I found the note Ginny left on the dining room table. Hermione had called for a clan meeting at the Burrow. Without thinking I apparated from the Lake District all the way down to Ottery St Catchpole. There I found a nervous group of adults waiting for me out in the gazebo overlooking the orchard. Even in the dim light from the Bluebell Flames I could see the fear on their eyes.

* * *

Before we go any further I think we should stop for a moment, so I can give you some background information on my clan. (Or my extended family or my inner circle or my kitchen cabinet. Whatever you want to call them, they were basically the only people I trusted. Thanks Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia for turning me into such a paranoid nutcase.) You should know how I really felt about them, and I'm not talking about the rosy propaganda we fed to outsiders.

By tradition we always gathered for holidays and important meetings at:

The new Burrow: Hermione had no desire to raise her children in the old Burrow (which was originally a pig pen), so the four of us tore it down and replaced it with an exact replica of the Longbourn House. The old orchard was also ripped-up and replanted. Hermione prided herself on the wide section of perfect apples, peaches, and plums. Ron and I enjoyed fermenting (and drinking) large batches of hard cider every autumn. Weasley Lightning, we use to call it.

Arthur and Andromeda: Arthur was the most decent wizard or muggle I ever knew—it's as simple as that. Without his moral guidance I would ended up as dark as Tom Riddle. Andromeda always disliked me, probably because of the role I played in the war that caused her so much pain and misery. Still, she was a good wife, and a good grandmother to all the children.

Teddy Lupin: It pains me to admit it, but he was a weak wizard like his father Remus. Being a male Metamorphmagus meant countless witches fell to the ground at Teddy's feet, so he never had anything to prove. For my first godson life was a pleasant dream, and he just went with the flow. I can't really blame him, since I would have done the same thing in his shoes.

Bill and Fleur: Everyone idolized them, but they were off in their own little world. There was always a distance there, no matter how hard you tried to make a connection. They were both so gorgeous and so brilliant and so in love that they didn't need the rest of us mere mortals.

Victoire, Dominique, and Louis: Thanks to Fleur and their Aunt Gabrielle the two girls were very French. They had a habit of looking down their noses at their female cousins and teasing their male ones. To be honest, I didn't like them that much. Louis was Al's best friend, and I considered him to be my third son, so there was sort of a balance there.

Charlie: I could never figure him out. To me dragons were mindless beasts to be hunted down and destroyed, but to Charlie they were living works of art to be studied and admired. This huge gulf between us meant we could never be anything more than acquaintances.

Percy and Pansy: All his siblings disliked Percy, and it was easy to understand why: he was a boring prig. But he also worked his arse off doing whatever needed to be done, and over the years I came to love him like a brother. Pansy... she was a monster. But she was my monster, and that distinction was important later on.

Sebastian and Livia: The pretty Parkinsons were Slytherins in the best sense of the word: cunning and ruthless in pursuit of their goals. Of course they despised their noble Uncle Harry, but I loved them anyway.

George and Angelina: They were loads of fun to be around, but they were also natural bullies, especially towards Percy and his children. Their behavior never sat well with me. We were friends, but nothing more than friends.

Fred and Roxanne: Fred was the founder and leader of the Hellions, which included Hugo and my son James. They saw themselves as the heirs to the Marauders, which I found depressing. Thanks to their juvenile antics I realized that I never would have been friends with my father James or my godfather Sirius Black if we had gone to Hogwarts together. Roxanne was beautiful, outgoing, and funny. She was my favorite niece, not that were was much competition for the title.

Ron and Hermione: You already know most of the sordid details, but keep in mind that they truly did love each other. Indeed, Ron often boasted of Hermione's appetite in the bedroom. That made for some awkward conversations, since I was perfectly aware of what Hermione was like in bed.

Hugo and Rose: Hugo was the Peter Pettigrew of the Hellions. I know that's a terrible thing to say, but that's how I saw him. Even so there was nothing I wouldn't do for the lad when he got into trouble, which was often. Rose could do no wrong in my eyes. She did plenty of wrong in everyone else's eyes, but to me she was the perfect witch.

Richard and Beatrice Granger: Hermione's parents knew all about their daughter's unorthodox personal life, and oddly enough the approved. Hermione was finally happy, and they had two magical grandchildren they adored. What was bourgeois morality (their words, not mine) compared to that?

Ginny: I loved her. No matter what you might have heard from other sources, never doubt that I loved her.

James, Al, and Lily Luna: James was a brat, and that was more my fault than anyone else's. I was afraid of being a bad parent, so I never had the courage to discipline my children—a fact which made me a bad parent. Al was up right there with Arthur in terms of being a good wizard, but I have no idea how or why he turned out so well. Lily Luna was my princess, and she knew it. In her defense she behaved like a good princess—as long as you remembered to curtsey. If you didn't curtsey then all bets were off.

The Longbottom/Bones family: Compared to the Potters they were a perfect bunch of wizards and witches. They were especially perfect when you compared them to...

The Scamander family: There was so much I hated about Rolf. His robes, shirts, trousers, socks, and shoes never matched. Not once. He was continually smoking or chewing some bizarre magical herb he found in Western Asia or Northern Europe or Eastern Africa. And he adored ridiculous conspiracy theories even more than Xenophilius. But what I hated most of all was that he made Luna smile—something I wanted to do, but never could. At least not with any consistency. Luna became even stranger after their marriage, but that just made me love her more. My other two godsons Lorcan and Lysander would grow up to be pretty strange too (a fact Hermione blamed on Rolf's love of magical herbs) but they were just harmless little tots back then.

* * *

"Where are the children?" I asked as I walked up the steps to the crowded gazebo.

"They're inside the house having a sleepover with their cousins," Ginny explained. "Where have you been all this time?"

"I'm sorry I took so long, but my fellow ambassadors droned on for hours after we heard the news."

"What has the ICW decided to do?" Hermione asked. It two o'clock in the morning and a volcano had just destroyed New Zealand, but even that couldn't explain why she was so jittery. "Have they made any preliminary plans?"

"No, not yet. But realistically what can the ICW do?" I asked as I sat down beside Ginny on one of the wooden benches. "What can any of us do about a natural disaster of this size and scope?"

"I'm not talking about the eruption of Lake Taupo itself, I'm talking about what we are going to do when the food starts to run out in a few months."

When Hermione saw the blank look on my face she went into lectured mode. It was annoying, but she did it so well.

It seems that in 1815 a large volcano in Indonesia called Mount Tambora had erupted, and the following year—1816—was referred to as the "Year Without a Summer" by historians. "Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death" and the "Poverty Year" were two other gruesome nicknames from that era. Mount Tambora sent so much ash into the atmosphere that it actually cut down on the amount of sunlight that reached the surface of the Earth. This lowered the temperature around the world by nearly a degree, which caused several major famines.

"Really?" I asked.

Voicing skepticism on my part was a mistake, and Hermione immediately jumped down my throat. She explained that the "Year Without a Summer" was only the most famous example of a "volcanic winter", as the phenomenon was known. The eruption of the Peruvian volcano Huaynaputina in 1600, and the eruption of the Icelandic volcano Laki in 1783 had also lead to famines when global temperatures dropped thanks to the ash floating high in the atmosphere.

"Alright, I believe you. But won't it be different now? The muggles have much more advanced farming techniques these days."

"Harry, Mount Tambora launched under** 200 **cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere. According to the latest reports from the muggles, Lake Taupo was a supervolcano that launched over **3,000 **cubic kilometers of ash into the atmosphere. That means global temperatures are going to drop by ten degrees for at least two or three years."

This information didn't mean anything to me, so I turned to our resident Herbology genius. Neville was sitting between Susan and Hannah, and he was holding hands with both of them. It was nauseating... and adorable. "Professor Longbottom, what's your expert opinion on all this?"

"If the muggles are right, then the regular crops here in Britain won't survive until harvest. The time between the last freeze in spring and the first one in autumn will be too short. Canada, Scandinavia, and Russia are also looking at near-total losses. The southern half of the United States might be safe, but I'm not sure about that. Even in normal years the Yanks sometimes have killer frosts in what they call their Deep South."

"Won't the muggles simply clear the equatorial rainforests in Africa and South America where it will stay warm, and plant their crops there?" Fleur asked.

Neville shook his head. "The soil in any rainforest is very poor. The nutrients are locked-up in the living vegetation. When a tree dies it quickly decomposes thanks to the heat and humidity, so instead of staying in the soil the nutrients are recycled by the other trees. If the muggles try to plants crops there, they're going to need a lot of artificial fertilizer to make it work."

"Keep in mind that there isn't much modern infrastructure in the Congo or the Amazon basins," Richard Granger added. "You wizards can teleport yourselves anywhere in the world. But we muggles need ships, harbors, and railroads to move the tractors, seeds, and fertilizer into those regions. And then the harvested crops would need to be transported to other countries before they rot. Building that much infrastructure in less than a year's time will be a difficult proposition."

"What about Asia?" I asked.

"If depends on if the monsoon season is affected by the drastic change in temperature," Hermione explained. "If that happens there will be famines in India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Big ones. China imports some food, but they are self-sufficient for the most part. However Japan and South Korea both need to import a large percentage of their food."

"We have the same problem here," Richard said. "Britain imports about 40 percent of our food, and once other governments realized what's about to happen no one will be willing to sell us their surplus food. That's if there is any left, which there probably won't be in a year or two."

All this information was too much for me to handle, so I just blurted out: "Bloody hell, how many people are going to die?"

"We have no idea," Hermione admitted. "But at this point I don't think anyone does."

"Toba—which is also in Indonesia—was the last supervolcano that we know about, and it erupted over 70,000 years ago," her father explained. "According to DNA analysis, the total human population dropped from around a million to less than 2,000 breeding pairs. That's how bad things got. Now there are seven billion people facing the same kind of ecological disaster, expect we don't have the same margin for error. Not only will we be facing a prolonged winter, we'll also be facing billions of starving human beings who will steal and kill in order to survive."

"I think the larger governments will be forced to declare martial law and nationalize the entire world economy," Beatrice said. While Mr Granger enjoyed keeping up with the latest scientific research in his spare time, Mrs Granger preferred following the great game of politics. "It will come down to a race between our industrial ingenuity and mother nature."

"What good will muggle machines do if it's too cold to grow anything?" Ron asked. He wasn't being rude or condescending to his mother-in-law. He was genuinely curious to hear her answer, and so was I.

"Honestly I'm not sure. Vertical farming and aquaculture have shown a great deal of promise over the past decade, but I don't know if those technologies can be adopted on a large-scale in such a short period of time. Of course we muggles have been building greenhouses since the time of the Roman Empire, and they should prove useful during this crisis."

"We visited the Netherlands a few years ago to take a look at their largest greenhouses," Susan said. "They seem to go on forever."

"The Dutch muggles have over twenty-five thousand acres under glass," Neville explained. "A lot of that space is used to grow flowers, but converting them over to other crops should be easy enough. If the muggles work together, I think everyone will be surprised with the results they can achieve."

"But you're forgetting that greenhouses are easy break into," George said. When everyone glared at him, he raised his hands in mock surrender. "I'm sorry, but it's true. Like Mr Granger said, if enough muggles are starving it will be impossible for the local Aurors to stop them from stealing the food being grown indoors."

"They are called police officers," Hermione said in a distracted voice. "But George is right. If law and order breaks down, things could get ugly very quickly."

"This whole discussion is irrelevant," Pansy declared from the other side of the gazebo. "The muggles will either survive, or they won't. That is none of our concern. Instead we must focus all of our efforts on protecting and feeding our own kind."

"We can't just let the muggles die," I hissed.

My magic spread out across the trees of the orchard like a dangerous mist. The others were so unsettled that they cleared a path between me and Pansy. Over the years I had tolerated her pureblood bigotry, but this was going too far.

"Potter, you said it yourself: the ambassadors to the ICW are a bunch of dithering old fools. If you suggest working with the muggles during this crisis, they will just ignore you."

"Harry, she's right," Arthur said quietly. "If you want to preserve your political viability, you can't mention the muggles back in Switzerland. At least not yet."

"However," Pansy continued, "if you provide the ICW with some sensible ideas on how we can feed ourselves, they might listen to you despite your blood status and young age."

Giving Pansy a magical thrashing during a late night duel would have been emotionally satisfying, but she was right. I had more important things to focus on.

"So, can we feed ourselves?" I finally asked.

"Most of our farms are surrounded by Notice-Me-Not Charms, so they should be safe," Ron offered.

"I'm not sure about that," Hermione said. "The wards around the Burrow are extensive, but I can get my parents past them with one simple spell. In a worst case scenario we could be looking at billions of starving muggles out scouring the countryside looking for food. Will a Notice-Me-Not Charm or even a Fidelius Charm hold up under that kind of intense pressure? We don't really know the breaking points of our magical wards, and one incident is all it would take to destroy the Statute of Secrecy forever."

"And if the muggles think we are hoarding or stealing their food, it will start the witch hunts all over again," Percy added.

"There are loads of hidden greenhouses where we grow potion ingredients," Neville said. "If the muggles can convert their greenhouses over to basic food production, then so can we."

"The deserts of North Africa are honeycombed with caves and tombs built by ancient wizards." Bill said. "With some help from the Goblins we could convert them into underground farms."

"Would they be willing to help us?" I asked.

"I think so, but that help will cost us plenty of galleons."

"The bloody Goblins probably want us to starve to death," Ron muttered.

"Don't be an idiot," Bill snapped. "They hate us, but they don't hate us that much. Besides, they can't earn any profits if all their customers are dead."

"The Goblins live in the tunnels below Gringotts, which means they already have underground farms. Would they be willing to sell us food?" I asked.

"They tend to be very concerned about long-term security, so I doubt it. They might be willing to sell us seeds, but not food."

"Any magical home in France worth its salt has an extensive wine cellar," Fleur offered. "Subterranean mushroom farms are also popular in my homeland."

"We could convert all nine levels of the Ministry of Magic into artificial greenhouses," Susan suggested.

Ginny squeezed my hand. "There is also the Chamber of Secrets and the Slytherin dorms below Hogwarts. It would be a nice change to put them to good use.

Luna, who was perched-up on one of the wooden banisters with Rolf, decided to join the conversation. "We know some Yeti who have settled in Antarctica. They've cut some very large caves into the Queen Maud Mountains down there. Several of them are larger than a Quidditch pitch."

"And what do your friends the Yeti grow in those caves," a grinning George asked.

"Hallucinogenic lichen, among other things" Luna replied.

"Let's try sticking to point," Hermione snapped.

"And what is the point?" I asked.

"The point is that Merlin himself had a hidden cave, so they became a status symbol among wizards like that idiot Salazar Slytherin. If the ICW moves quickly enough we can put these caves to good use like Ginny said. With enough hard work we should be able to make it through the upcoming volcanic winter. But you must convince them to start work immediately. In a few weeks time it might already be too late."

"So we have a rough plan for our side of the border, but what about the muggles?"

Hermione looked away in shame. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but for once Pansy is right. The situation with the muggles is out of our control. All we can do now is focus on saving as many witches and wizards as we can."

"What about your family and the families of the other muggleborn? What about the squibs? Will we just turned them away if they ask for our help?"

The only answer I received was silence.

* * *

Two days later the horror of what was about to happen was starting to sink-in. Back at the ICW the mood had gone from smug satisfaction to outright panic. I asked for permission to address my fellow ambassadors in the oblong meeting hall, something I had never done before. The current Supreme Mugwump let me speak, more out of curiosity than respect.

You must keep in mind that while I was the youngest member of the ICW by over forty years, the fact that I was a half-blood worked in my favor that day. The other ambassadors—most of whom were purebloods going back ten or more generations—assumed that I was an expert on the muggles. They were eager for any information I could give them, since it was impossible to get anything useful out of their usual sources.

While millions of clever people like the Grangers had recognized the long-term implications of a supervolcano eruption, the muggle governments and the muggle press had nothing to say on the subject. The word famine was never used on the television, the radio, the internet, or in the newspapers. It quickly became clear that a government-sponsored news blackout was in effect all around the world, and even the purebloods understood that was an ominous sign.

In a trembling voice I read the speech Susan and Hermione had written for me about the effects the Lake Taupo eruption would have on the global climate. Several other ambassadors confirmed that the planet was facing a volcanic winter which would last for about two or three years. It seems that magical historians had also documented the connection between large-scale volcanic eruptions and famines in the past. They even had some scraps of information about the eruption of the Greek island of Santorini, which caused the total collapse of the Minoan civilization back in the second millennia BC.

In closing I suggested that we move the majority of our agricultural production indoors and underground to protect it from both the cold weather and the threat posed by the starving muggles. This idea went over well. A bit too well, if you know what I mean.

When I sat down the decrepit Russian ambassador stood up to speak. "My colleagues, the boy—

(I could have crushed Pavel in a duel, but the Russian wanker always called me the "boy" during debates. They all did. That would change soon enough.)

"— is right about the filthy mudbloods. I have seen with my own eyes what they are capable of when their sources of food disappear. They become mindless beasts who will devour the flesh of their own sons and daughters. We must cut off all contact with them now, before the vermin can turn on us."

After dealing with Tom Riddle and his Death Eaters I thought I knew all the slurs purebloods used to describe the muggles. During the dozen speeches that followed I learned that Tom had only scratched the surface. Trust the muggles? How can you trust such vicious animals? According to my fellow ambassadors the only course of action was to find a deep hole, cast some nasty wards around it, and then hide there until the worst had passed.

Work together with the muggles to find a solution to our common problems? That idea was never considered—not even for a second.

As I listened to those bigoted and cowardly speeches something inside of me snapped. Like Hermione I had dreamed of reforming the magical world from inside the system, but now I realized that would never happen. The ICW in its current form had to go. The future depended on it.


	5. Chapter 5

Sitting here in the past, I'm curious to know how the future will remember Pomona Sprout. Is the last Headmistress of Hogwarts seen as nothing more than a minor footnote? If that's the case, then you should go find the nearest historian and punch him or her in the face for me. Those idiots were so eager to give me credit for everything that they ignored the witch who got it all started. Without Pomona's experience and network of friends we would have scurried around like headless chickens for who knows how long.

After my recent trip to the Switzerland I lost all faith in the ICW. In fact I was so filled with rage at my fellow ambassadors' stupidity that I could've cast an Unforgivable Curse on the nearest puppy. I had to do something about the situation, but I had no idea what that something should be. My first instinct was to consult Hermione, but she deferred to Neville and his superior knowledge of agriculture.

"Are you saying you don't have any ideas?" I asked as I glanced around the Burrow. Hermione had Ron, the children, and an army of transfigured nutcracker soldiers packing everything in sight.

"Harry, during the last war I cast a Memory Charm on my own parents. After I found them in Australia I swore that I would never do anything like that again. That means all of my attention must be focused on protecting them and all the other members of my family, which is quite large when you include my aunts, uncles, and cousins."

"Are you planning on bringing them over the border to the magical world?"

"If things get bad enough out in the muggle world, that's exactly what I intend to do."

"Even if it means breaking the law?"

Hermione smiled. "When has that ever stopped us before?"

"Where are you going to send this stuff when you're done packing? Are we moving to Hogwarts for the duration?"

"I think that is our best option. England alone has a population of over fifty million people, and one million of them live right here in Devon. It will be safer for us to hide in the remote Highlands of Scotland. You should really talk to Professor Longbottom, and see how things are going up there."

* * *

"You mean the ICW isn't going to do anything?" Neville asked when I found him twenty minutes later in one of the Hogwarts greenhouses. The place stank of dragon dung fertilizer, a smell I would soon come to love. "Didn't they listen to the speech Susan and Hermione wrote for you?"

"Surprisingly enough they did, but it will still take them weeks of pointless committee meetings before they actually decided to do anything—if they do anything at all," I explained. "We can't wait for them to act, but I'm not sure what we should do first. Do you have any ideas?"

Neville cleaned himself off with a Scouring Charm as he stalled for time. "Well, right now we're focused on preparing the castle and Hogsmeade for winter."

"I not just talking about things here in Britain, I talking about the whole world. Aren't there any large-scale projects we should be planning and starting?"

"Harry, that's a complicated question."

"I know Professor, that's why I'm asking you."

"Preparing Hogwarts is one thing, but feeding all the wizards and witches in world without any help from the muggles—"

"Wait a minute, we buy food from the muggles?"

Neville shrugged his shoulders. "It's cheaper than growing it ourselves. That means we have to replace a certain percentage of our food, but I'm not sure about the exact numbers."

"What about the Ministry of Magic?" I asked. "Would they have the statistics we need?"

"I asked Susan that question yesterday, but she hasn't been able to find anything useful in the archives."

"So the Ministry knows how thick gold and silver and pewter cauldrons are suppose to be, but we don't know how much food we buy from the muggles. Why do I have the horrible feeling we're all going to die?"

"Don't say things like that, not even in private. Let's go see the Headmistress. If anyone has the statistics we need, it will be her or one of her friends."

So there you have the pathetic truth: Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom—the Heroes of the Battle of Hogwarts—were pretty much useless. The only idea we had was to go running to mummy. Luckily for us in this case mummy was a brilliant Herbologist and a Hufflepuff.

As we climbed the stairs to the Headmistress' office Neville pointed out the dozens of shallow water tanks being built by the house-elves throughout the castle. They were all connected by a network of pipes that ran from a central reservoir high in the Astronomy Tower all the way down to the Chamber of Secrets.

"Given the limited amount of time we have, the Headmistress and I decided that hydroponic tanks are the most practical design we could use," Neville explained. "We plan on laying downs mats of rock wool, and then pumping a stream of nutrient-rich water through them. The system should be ready for the first planting in about three or four weeks."

"It's only going to take you a month? That's incredible."

"Don't get too excited. Thanks to Helga Hufflepuff, the castle was the largest concentration of house-elves in Europe. Plus it's summer, so they don't have any other work to do. That will change once Hogwarts starts to fill up."

"What about the crops growing out in the fields. Will they be affected by the acid rain we've been hearing about?"

(Yes, acid rain. That was another lovely side-effect of the Lake Taupo eruption. A supervolcano releases a staggering amount of underground sulfur into the atmosphere, where it combines with oxygen to create sulfur dioxide. Mix sulfur dioxide with rainwater, and you get a weak acid falling from the sky. It isn't strong enough to melt human flesh, but it does have a nasty habit of killing plants.)

"It will depend on the levels of acid, and on the weather patterns in the coming weeks and months. So your guess is as good as mine," Neville replied.

The Headmistress was conferring with several house-elves when we reached her office. Pomona's hair had gone white and she was as wide at the waist as she was tall, but she still had the energy of a witch half her age. The Headmistress was sympathetic to my arguments when I laid them out, but only to a degree.

"Mr Potter... Harry, I wish I had a solution to the problems facing the world, but I don't. Instead we must focus our efforts here at Hogwarts and Hogsmeade where we can actually accomplish something meaningful."

Her words made me flinch, because she was right. But that didn't stop me from pushing on. "I know I sound like a foolish Gryffindor, but that's not the case this time. I swear. If we do nothing but stockpile food and hide, it will only be a matter of time until someone tries to take that food away from us."

"The wards of Hogwarts have protected us from the muggles for a thousand years," Pomona replied. "I hate the idea of fighting, but I will not let those under my protection starve."

"You don't understand. This volcanic winter is going to be worse than the Inquisition or the Black Death or even the Second World War. Seven billion muggles are facing possible death. Are you sure the wards of this castle will be able to protect us from a threat of that magnitude? Because I'm not."

"The boy does have a point."

Neville and I both groaned when we heard that distinctive voice coming from one of the portraits on the wall. Severus bloody Snape. I still don't know how it's possible to hate a wizard so much, but at the same time respect his memory. Snape had given Tom Riddle the prophecy which lead to the death of my parents, and he abused me for six years simply because I looked like his rival James Potter. Yet he also saved my life several times at the risk of prolonged torture and death. The muggle Winston Churchill once described Russia as "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma", and that's exactly how I viewed Severus Snape.

Pomona's eyes narrowed as she looked over at the portrait. Hufflepuffs were a friendly lot, but even they had their limits. "And what is that suppose to mean?"

"The muggles outnumber us by a hopeless degree," Snape replied in that sneering tone of his. "Only if the magical world comes together and acts as a cohesive unit during this crisis will we be able to resist them in any meaningful way."

"Harry has already been to the ICW," Pomona argued. "If there is going to be any world-wide unification among our people, it will have to come from them."

Snape rolled his eyes. "Albus, you explain to these dunderheads how the ICW really works."

From what I knew of Dumbledore, I expected him to chastise Snape for being so rude. Instead my former mentor launched into a detailed explanation of how the ICW had been expressly created to prevent the unification of the magical world. The individual governments around the world—which were controlled by corrupt pureblood aristocrats for the most part—had no wish to surrender their political and economic power to a bunch of unelected bureaucrats in Switzerland. It was a strange experience to hear Dumbledore be so cynical.

"Is that why all the major votes have to unanimous?" I asked after I thought about my experiences as a new ambassador.

"Of course," Dumbledore's portrait replied. "The founders of the ICW knew that it would be impossible for a Supreme Mugwump to gain any real power if he or she had to beg for votes from every single country on Earth to get anything done."

"But if the ICW is so useless, then why did you serve as an ambassador for all those years?"

"I have always enjoyed the company of intelligent wizards and witches. For me there was nothing better than trading political and social gossip with my peers over a glass of fine wine."

"Funny, I thought he spent all that time in Switzerland gathering allies for the war against Tom Riddle," Neville whispered to me.

"Yeah, that's what I thought too."

A new voice suddenly entered the conversation. "Why are you wasting your time with those two fools? If you wanted to know how to transfigure a wet turd into a butterfly, or how to brew a potion to get rid of crotch rot my two colleagues might be of some use. But their so-called expertise isn't what you need right now."

Those biting comments came from the portrait of Phyllida Spore, a Headmistress from the late fourteenth century. How did a dunderhead like me realize her? Because the witch was a legendary Herbologist, and her masterpiece _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi _was still in use by the students of Hogwarts six-hundred years after her death.

As for her colorful tone? First of all she was from the fourteenth century, which was a very colorful age. Secondly she was a Herbologist, and they tended to have chips on their shoulders. While the great Transfiguration and Potions masters were hailed as artists, and the Arithmancy and Ancient Runes professors were considered brilliant intellectuals, Herbologist were seen as lowly tradesmen by many in the magical world. In my opinion this social stigma was nonsense, but it existed nevertheless.

"What you really need is a group of Herbologists to solve this problem of yours," Headmistress Spore continued. "After all, that is why the Four Founders created Hogwarts. So witches and wizards could come together in peace, and share their magical knowledge for the betterment of the world."

"That sounds like a great idea," I said.

Pomona shook her head. "All the Herbologists I know will be busy working on the same logistical problems we are. Why would they leave their homes in such dangerous times to travel here to Hogwarts?"

For some reason my mind was cast back to my fifth year. Right in that office Dumbledore had escaped from Minister Fudge and the Aurors who were trying to arrest him on some trumped-up charge. He had slipped through of their fingers... with a little help from his familiar.

"Maybe your colleagues just need to be asked in the right way," I said with more confidence than I felt. "Fawkes!"

To my relief Dumbledore's phoenix did make an appearance. To my amazement he was joined by a number of other phoenixes. In a few seconds there was so many fireballs popping into existence all around the office that I had to cast a Cooling Charm. All told, forty-nine phoenixes answered my desperate call for help that day.

At the center of this magnificent flock were two birds I recognized on sight. The first was Fawkes himself. The other phoenix had a distinct combination of red-and-gold feathers that I had seen in Ron's Quidditch magazines. It was poor Sparky, the mascot of the New Zealand Quidditch team.

"I'm sorry for your loss," I told the phoenix.

Apparently Sparky wasn't looking for sympathy, because he bit my hand when I tried to stroke his plumage. Thus began our rocky relationship as master and familiar. And in case you had any doubts, Sparky was the master and I was the familiar. What can I say? He's smarter than I am.

"I had no idea there were this many of phoenixes in the world," Pomona whispered.

"What are they all doing here?" Neville asked.

"They are offering to carry your invitations," Dumbledore's portrait explained. "Headmistress Sprout, I trust you know a number of Herbologists who would be willing to visit Hogwarts for a few hours to discuss our current problems."

Of course she did—she was a Hufflepuff. Over the next hour Pomona and Neville came up with a list of the forty-nine most talented Herbologists in the world, and wrote out forty-nine invitations. Trying those invitations to the legs of the temperamental birds was an ordeal. The phoenixes made it clear to us that they considered carrying mail (and passengers) beneath their dignity, and that they was only cooperating with us because of the tragic loss of Sparky's homeland. But that didn't stop them from clawing and biting at our hands.

(How does a voiceless phoenix communicate with a wizard? After eighty years of living with Sparky I still don't have a clue. But that ignorance doesn't stop me from understanding his many insults and complaints.)

One by one the phoenixes disappeared from the office in bursts of flames. And one by one they reappeared only a few minutes later carrying witches and wizards from around the world, some of whom were still in their nightgowns.

Pomona made the proper introductions in over twenty different languages, and everyone agreed this impromptu conference was a sensible idea. They also agreed that the Headmistress of Hogwarts would serve as the chief moderator. She was the first Herbologist to be selected as the leader of a major magical school in over a hundred years, and they all respected her. Neville was also a popular figure thanks to his heroic stand against Tom Riddle, an act which was already the stuff of legends in the Herbology community.

* * *

We soon made our way down to the Great Hall for some extra space and refreshments. During the long hours that followed I just sat quietly in a corner as Sparky pecked at me with his sharp beak. Meanwhile Pomona, Neville, and their fellow Herbologists hammered out the agricultural protocols we would follow for the next several years. Even though I had been a gardener for most of my life, the technical jargon flew straight over my head. However I did manage to pick-out a few bits of information, and I didn't like the sound of any of it.

First of all we were going vegan.

Producing beef, pork, and chicken means you must first feed the cows, pigs, and chickens for several months. This process takes an enormous amount of grain that we couldn't afford to waste. As a result a majority of our livestock would have to be slaughtered immediately. Only small number would be kept alive for future breeding purposes.

Another unpleasant surprise: we would mostly be eating food I had never heard of before. Things like quinoa, amaranth, spelt, bulgur, and hemp seeds. And then there were the foods I had heard of before, but hated with a passion. Things like soybeans, lentils, and beans. Sweet Merlin, we ate so many beans I thought the epidemic of farts would never end.

This new diet was necessary because those plants were high in protein, which a body needs in order to stay healthy. Normally you get your protein from meat, eggs, and dairy products like cheese and yogurt. Sadly none of that would be available during the Long Winter, as it came to be known.

Another unpleasant fact: we would be eating that dreadful food without the benefit of any herbs or spices. Basil, chives, dill, fennel, garlic, mustard, nutmeg, oregano, paprika, pepper, rosemary, sorrel, thyme, and wasabi... those wonderful flavors came from plants we couldn't afford to grow. All we were left with was plain salt.

And washing that tasteless food down with anything but water? Forget about it. Butterbear: sorry, no butter or barley. Pumpkin juice: no pumpkins either. Wine: we would be eating the precious grapes, not making wine with them. Tea or coffee: those tropical plants need several years to reach maturity, and we didn't have years to waste. The Englishman inside of me wept as I contemplated a life without tea.

But the greatest blow was the loss of most desserts. Chocolate: nope. Vanilla: nope. Anything with sugar in it: nope. Puddings and custards: the few cows left alive would be using their milk to feed their young, not us. My beloved treacle tart: completely out of the picture until the climate had returned to normal.

Despite my disappointment with this spartan diet, the conference itself was a success. The Herbologists knew exactly what it would take to feed our global population of about a million witches, wizards, and squibs. Their hundred page manifesto/textbook—in a flight of fancy someone gave it the title _The Long Winter Garden_—was finished when we greeted dawn the next morning. Soon a thousand copies were printed and distributed free of charge.

* * *

Only five days after the eruption of Lake Taupo the first domino fell when the muggles of North Korea invaded the muggles of South Korea. From their point of view I suppose it was a rational decision. The news blackout about the threat of mass starvation was starting to fall apart thanks to the chat rooms, blogs, and emails of the muggle internet. To survive in its current form the North Korean government was going to require the food and resources of South Korea, so they decided to take them by military force.

The war started off with a sustained rocket and artillery barrage that caused a horrific loss of life in the South Korea, and from there things got worse. The muggles... let's just say they are talented at killing each other, and leave it at that.

Unfortunately in the midst of this new war millions of innocent lives were lost in the crossfire. A random rocket or artillery shell has no trouble killing an unprepared wizard or witch, and most died as they slept in their beds. The magical deaths in New Zealand numbered less than one hundred, but after only a few days of fighting the magical deaths in South Korea top one thousand. The local Ministry of Magic ordered an evacuation of the magical districts near the Demilitarized Zone, but even that wasn't enough to stop the carnage.

And this was just the first muggle war. It was clear to everyone that there was worse to come. Much worse if the muggles started using their stockpile of nuclear and chemical weapons to secure the resources of other countries. That possibility had the ICW in a panic when we reconvened one week after the eruption.

The session started with a rousing speech by the Argentinian Ambassador calling for a war against the muggles. And not just against the muggles of North Korea. No, the witch wanted to declare war against _**all**_ of the muggle. At the end of her speech she received a standing ovation that lasted for minutes.

That's when I walked out of the ICW, never to return.

It has become a tired cliché to call this the moment when the Boy-Who-Lived became the Great Seeker. Let me tell you something in all honesty: that cliché is a load of shite. My rash decision was driven by anger and a healthy dose of fear. It was in no way the act of a political genius. I was going on instinct, and the larger ramifications of my gesture never once entered my mind.

And no, I did not give a rousing speech of my own damning the ICW to hell before I left Switzerland. That is also pure fiction.

In fact no one noticed as I left the ancient marble building, and if they had noticed they wouldn't have cared. Not in the least. I was a dirty halfblood of no real importance. The purebloods had controlled the destiny of the magical world for a millennia, and they believed that would never change. And I believed it too.

* * *

To me any further political maneuvering at ICW was a dead-end, so I figured hopping around the world by portkey was one area where I could make a useful contribution.

"So where am I going?" I asked Hermione and Percy the next day.

The pair were natural bureaucrats, and they were handling the paperwork as we searched for suitable caves where we could grow more crops. Percy had commandeered one of the last empty classrooms at Hogwarts as an office. The castle was already overcrowded, and getting more so with each passing hour thanks to the disaster in South Korea.

"Luna wants you to visit her in Antarctica," Hermione replied.

"She wants me to look at the caves the Yeti occupy down there?"

"According to her they might be useful."

"Do you believe that?" I asked.

"I find it hard to believe anything I hear from Rolf or Luna," Hermione admitted. "But it's still worth a look."

"Why? Isn't Antarctica really cold?"

"It's the coldest place on Earth, but theoretically that won't be a problem if the caves are far enough underground. Are you taking Sparky with you?"

My new phoenix fascinated everyone. If they only knew the truth. "That decision is entirely up to Sparky."

"Here is a pair of omnioculars with no recordings on them," Percy said as he handed me a large Mokeskin pouch. "Remember to have someone stand in the foreground so Headmistress Sprout can accurately judge the size of the cave. And Neville wants you to gather temperature readings, humidity readings, and as many soil samples as you can before you freeze to death. The pouch also as a parka, a hat, gloves, and boots that are all enchanted with Heating Charms. Here is the portkey Luna and Rolf sent us. You will have to make one for the return trip to Hogwarts. Good hunting."

"_Ignatius_, you're suppose to wish him good luck," Hermione chided. "He is traveling to the bottom of the world on the recommendation of the Rolf and Luna Scamander."

Percy rolled his eyes. "Good luck, Harry."

"I"m going to need it," I muttered. I loved Luna dearly, but I really didn't trust her judgement when it came to the subject of magical creatures.

After getting dressed in all that winter gear I activated the portkey. In case you were wondering, transporting yourself eighteen-thousand kilometers in a few seconds is a terrible idea. It's even worse when you slam into a floor carved from solid rock. I didn't break any bones, but I was covered with bruises for days.

"Welcome to the Mountains of Madness," Rolf said as he and Luna helped me to my feet.

Surrounding us were a large group of Yeti. Have you ever met one in person? It's an unnerving experience. The three meter height, the shaggy white hair, the long fangs, the huge claws... all that I could handle. It was their glowing blue eyes that freaked me out. My green eyes are notorious the world over, but the blue eyes of a Yeti are worse. Bioluminescence as an evolutionary adaption, Luna explained.

As I tried to shake off the pain of my rough landing, I glanced around the sizable cave. The light was gloomy, but I could see a dome ceiling about ten meters above my head. Various structures that looked like huts were cut directly into the walls, and there were many simple tents scattered around the floor. It looked like a village right out of the Stone Age. It smelled like one too. Yeti don't exactly stink, but they do have a strong musky odor.

"Before we get started with the tour, I curious to know why your friends are willing to share their homes with us."

One of the Yeti roared in a complex fashion, which Luna quickly translated: "Pabodie and his sleuth—"

"Sleuth?"

"A group of Yeti is called a sleuth," Rolf explained.

"—are willing to let us stay here as guests if we help them expand their network of caves," Luna continued. "Of course once things are back to normal they expect us to leave."

"That price sounds fair enough to me," I said as studied the towering creatures. "By the way, where are we? You called this place the Mountains of Madness?"

"That's a bit of Lovecraftian humor," Rolf replied. "These caves are located in the Queen Maud Mountains, which is another name for the middle section of the Transantarctic Mountain Range."

That meant nothing to me. But I didn't want to look like an idiot in front of Luna, so I nodded my head. "Are there any muggles here?"

"There are about five thousand scientists on the continent during the summer months, but none of them live nearby, especially now during the darkness of winter," Rolf explained.

The orangish light of the cave was very unusual, so I kept looking around to see how it was produced. To my astonishment I saw a glowing light bulb, and then another. Now that I knew what to look for, I saw them everywhere.

"Wait a second, are those muggle light bulbs?" I asked.

"They are called sodium-vapor lamps, to be precise," Luna said. "The design was copied from the muggles, but the Yeti make them here in one of their mining complexes."

"How do they make a sodium-vapor lamp in the middle of Antarctica, and where to they get the electricity to run them?"

"Do you know anything about the Yeti?" Rolf asked.

"No, not really."

"Let's start the tour, and we'll explain everything as we walk."

We three humans left the Yeti village behind, and made our way to a large round door at the edge of the cave. This door lead to a second door and then a third one. Finally we entered a tunnel which was shaped like a long barrel vault. The ceiling was about five meters high, but that wasn't surprising considering the height of the Yeti. It was only ten meters wide, but it stretched on for at least two or three hundred meters. Alongside the narrow central pathway were two long beds filled with soil and an odd assortment of plants. Above these beds were stings of those odd orange light bulbs.

"The Yeti like the cold weather and lack of muggles here in Antarctica, but there isn't much to eat besides penguins and fish," Luna explained. "So they started excavating these side tunnels to grow fruits and vegetables. They might look like carnivores, but they are suckers for a good salad."

I soon noticed the drastic change in temperature. Back in the Yeti village it was so cold that I had been able to see my breath, but in these narrow tunnels it was warm and humid. So much so that I began sweating under my parka.

"How do they control the temperature in the different caves and tunnels?" I asked as I started making recordings with the omnioculars Percy gave me.

"The sodium-vapor lamps provide the heat," Luna told me. "In truth they provide too much heat. The Yeti had to dig small ventilation shafts to the surface. Opening and closing the shafts allows the hot air to rise, and the cold air from the surface to descend. After years of experimentation they have worked out a system that maintains a constant temperature year round."

"When did they start work on all this?"

Rather than answer my question directly, Luna began explaining the history of the Yeti as we walked down the long tunnel. Like their cousins the Giants, the magic of a Yeti is mostly concentrated in their skin and muscles. The were invulnerable to all but the deadliest of spells, and they were capable of lifting tons of weight with their powerful arms.

However unlike the Giants they are highly intelligent. When the population of the muggles began to explode in the last two centuries, the Yeti realized they needed a new and safer home. So the fled the Arctic by traveling down the spine of the Rocky and Andes Mountains. After a rough trip across the Drake Passage they reached Antarctica in the nineteen-twenties, and started work on this mountain.

After a few minutes we came to a four-way intersection, and I was surprised to see three more tunnels stretching off into the distance. "Just how big is this place?"

"The Yeti have spread their caves throughout this entire mountain and parts of two others," Rolf explained. "They also have mines in several more mountains."

"Have they run out of space yet?"

Luna laughed. "Harry, the Transantarctic Mountains are over 3,500 kilometers long. It will take them a million years to run out of space."

"That's good to hear. Now what about the electricity?"

"The Yeti have three small power stations that run on coal."

That stopped me dead in my tracks. "They built power stations here in Antarctica? How is that possible?"

"We told you before that they are intelligent," Luna said. "Besides the design of a muggle power station isn't that complicated. You burn coal, the coal turns water into steam, the steam turns a turbine, the turbine turns the generator, and the generator generates the electricity for the sodium-vapor lamps. The muggles can be very clever at times."

"The muggle are also very violent at times. Haven't they noticed the Yeti stealing their coal?"

Rolf look over at me with a bemused smile on his face. (Can I tell you again how much I hated him?) "Do you know anything about the history of Antarctica?"

I decided to swallow my pride for the greater good. "No, I don't anything about the history of Antarctica."

The smug wanker took out his pipe, slowly lit the bowl with his wand, and then began to lecture to me as if I were a schoolboy.

It seems that back in the twenty century most parts of Antarctica had been claimed by Norway, Chile, Argentina, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. These countries had sliced the continent up into several pie-shaped wedges with the South Pole at the exact center.

"Well, I guess New Zealand won't be problem for the Yeti anymore."

The second that thoughtless and horrible comment left my lips, Sparky flamed into view. He then began violently peaking at me.

"I'm sorry," I told the angry phoenix. "But I have a lot on my mind at the moment."

Luna managed to stop Sparky before he killed me. "Harry, I think your new friend expects better behavior from you in the future."

"Whatever," I muttered as I tended to my new wounds. "You were telling me about the territorial claims the muggle governments made during the last century."

"Yes, the muggles seized almost all the land in Antarctica, but they left one wedge-shaped section unclaimed," Rolf continued. "It's called Marie Byrd Land, and that's where this part of the Queen Maud Mountains are located."

"So no individual muggle or muggle country owns these mountains?"

"The legal term is _terra nullius_."

"How big is this Marie Byrd Land?" I asked.

"Just over one and a half million square kilometers."

"That can't be right. The total size of Britain is only 240,000 square kilometers. Someone must have claimed all this land before now."

"To the muggles it's just a remote and frozen wasteland," Luna explained. "But that's not the case for the Yeti. They have been able to settle here, and they have found natural resources they need in order to build a thriving community."

"Natural resources like coal."

"Exactly. They have also discovered sizable despots of phosphorite and potash, which they use to make fertilizer. Plus they mine iron to make steel, and copper to make wires."

"And it's all perfectly legal," I mused.

"It would also be legal for the Yeti to claim the New Zealand territory," Luna added as she petted Sparky. "It sits right next to Marie Byrd Land, and it would give them another half a million square kilometers to work with."

"Can you take me up to the surface? I would like to take a look around before I return to Hogwarts."

Walking from the warm vegetation tunnels to the colder Yeti village was a shock. But walking up a long flight of stairs from the village into the dark Antarctic winter was a nightmare. Even the Warming Charms on my heavy clothes couldn't protect me from the brutal Katabatic winds that came roaring down off the East Antarctic Ice Sheet.

"How long until the sun comes up?" I yelled over the wind.

"Another two months!" Luna yelled back.

I cast another Warming Charm on myself, and looked out over the landscape. Only the rocky tips of the mountains were visible in the pale starlight. Everything else was blanketed with pure white snow. Even the worst winter in the Highlands couldn't compare to this.

"How deep does the snow go?"

"In some spots it's over four kilometers deep!" Rolf yelled.

Living in such a terrible environment was a high price to pay for safety, but what other choice did we have? The muggles were already slaughtering each other, and thanks to the stupidity of the ICW they would soon be at our throats as well. It made me sick to admit it, but hiding in a deep hole really was our best option if we wanted to survive. And the "Mountains of Madness" provided us with deepest and most remote hole on Earth.

Once we were safely back underground I turned to Rolf and Luna. "Tell your friends the Yeti that we will accept their offer of hospitality. If they let us stay here, we will help them build as many new caves and tunnels as we can."

* * *

**Author's Notes**: (1) At the top of the page is a picture of the actual Queen Maud Mountains. (2) The Antarctic Treaty of 1959 and its effects on Harry's plans will be discussed in future chapters.


	6. Chapter 6

My first trip to Antarctica had only taken a few hours, but by the time I returned to Hogwarts there were already more refugees roaming the crowded hallways of the castle. Their sad and bewildered faces only reinforced my decision to leave Britain before it was too late, but I thought convincing my family to leave would be difficult, if not impossible. In many ways it was a crazy idea.

But then Hermione found me. Her eyes were red with tears, and without a word she handed me the latest edition of the _Daily Mail_. On the front page of the muggle newspaper was a gruesome picture of an overweight woman lying dead in the street. She had been killed by an angry mob in London for the crime of buying too many groceries at a local store.

"There has been hundreds of minor confrontations, but this is the first known murder here in Britain. Soon the mass hysteria will start in earnest," she explained.

Before I could say anything Hermione cast a perfect Disillusionment Charm and led me to a nearby broom closet. I wasn't surprised, since emotional turmoil often triggered this reaction from her. We made love hundreds of times over the years, but I still responded like a teenager when she started unbuttoning my jeans. In a few seconds those jeans were down around my ankles, and less than a minute later it was over. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but that was a pretty average performance for us. Our ongoing affair was intense, but monotonous at the same time.

"What are we going to do?" Hermione whispered as we magically sterilized our clothes. We never left a trace of incriminating evidence for Ron or Ginny to find.

In broad strokes I told her about Antarctica and the settlement the Yeti had built in the Queen Maud Mountains over the decades. "I'm going to stay down there with the Scamanders until this mess is over, and my family is coming with me."

"Does that include Rose?"

"How can you even ask a question like that? Of course that includes Rose. You and Hugo are also coming with me. And if Ron thinks otherwise, I will tell him the truth about everything and damn the consequences."

"Spare me," Hermione huffed. I often made that same threat in the heat of the moment, but I never went through with it. "What about my muggle family?"

"What about them? Are you planning on leaving them behind?"

"No you prat, but what will you tell the others when we start taking in hordes of muggles?"

"I will tell them the truth: that digging and maintaining the new crop tunnels beneath those icy mountains will require an enormous amount of labor. That means the more warm bodies we have on hand, the better. So far the only ones committed to this plan are Luna, Rolf and me."

Hermione was silent for moment was we stood nose-to-nose in that tiny broom closet. "Retreating to Antarctica does make sense, since extreme isolation from any population centers is exactly what we need."

I was thrilled to hear her say that, since I trusted her judgement more than my own. "Do you really think so?"

"Yes, I do. But convincing the Wizengamot—"

"Stop right there. I don't care about the Wizengamot or the Ministry of Magic or the ICW. Not anymore. What I care about is the safety of my family. If anyone wants to join us, they will be welcome as long as they respect the laws of the Yeti."

"I thought you wanted to save the world, or at least you did a few days ago," Hermione said. "What has changed all of a sudden?"

"Down there in the cold Antarctic night I had what's called a moment of clarity."

"Oh really? And what was the nature of this moment of clarity?"

"That fighting against a Dark Lord like Tom Riddle is something I can do. I'm not very good at it, but I can do it. But fighting against the power of a supervolcano? That sort of thing is beyond me."

"Harry, it's beyond the power of any human being—magical or muggle. Not just you," Hermione whispered as she leaned in for a soft kiss. "I know this sounds callous given what's happening out there in the larger world, but I'm glad that you've accepted the reality of the situation."

"Why? Were you afraid that my "Saving-People Thing" was going to get us all killed this time?"

She said nothing, which confirmed my fears. There's a fine line between bravery and stupidity, and I had dragged my friends across that line far too often in the past.

I leaned in for a soft kiss of my own. "You don't have to worry about me charging off on another futile crusade. I promise. Come on, let's go break the news to the others."

* * *

While Hermione rounded up the rest of the Weasleys, I went to collect Ginny from our new "home" on the second floor of the castle. When I entered the former classroom her back was to the door, but her ramrod posture told me all I needed to know. My wife was upset about trading her beautiful and spacious house in the Lake District for this ugly and claustrophobic flat. And it was claustrophobic. The classroom—which held all our worldly possessions and two makeshift bedrooms—was so small that it brought back unpleasant memories of my childhood at Number Four, Privet Drive.

Ginny hadn't started complaining yet, but I knew it was only a matter of time

"Daddy! Where is Sparky?" Lily Luna asked when she saw me standing at the door.

My adorable two year-old daughter flew into my waiting arms, and Al was soon wrapped around my leg. James had reached an age where he considered such things "uncool", but given the current chaos he reluctantly join us in a group hug. The three of them jabbered on about Sparky and the excitement of living here at Hogwarts with their cousins, but I wasn't really listening to them. Instead I locked eyes with my angry wife.

"Do you want to see a new spell I created?" I asked them after I put Lily Luna down and took out one of my wands.

"Yes!" they yelled in unison. To children magic is the best toy imaginable, and most adults feel the same way.

"Expecto Patronum."

A stag made of pure magic emerged from the tip of my wand, and filled the room with its silvery light. "Escort the children to Arthur and Andromeda." Prongs (yes, my Patronus has a nickname) bowed its massive antlers, and then trotted out the door. James and Al each took Lily Luna by the hand, and raced after it.

"Using a Patronus as a babysitter?" Ginny asked.

"I thought it would be a useful trick during an emergency."

"True enough. How did your trip to the South Pole go? Did you talk to Rolf and Luna?"

Instead of answering I looked around at the many trunks, wooden crates, and Mokeskin pouches stacked up against the stone walls. "Don't bother unpacking any of this. We're leaving Hogwarts tomorrow."

"Where are we going now?" Ginny asked in a tight voice

I decided to spit it out quickly: "For the next few years we're going to live with the Yeti in Antarctica."

Even without the help of a pensieve I can still remember her tirade as if happened yesterday. It was filled with comments like: It's freezing down there. You actually trust Rolf and Luna? The Yeti will eat the children. Are we going to live underground all the time? What will happen to our house and to Hogwarts while we're gone? It's freezing down there. That point came up several times.

During that endless tirade I can also remember being shocked at my reaction. I didn't care—not in the least. For years I had indulged Ginny's every whim. However my recent "moment of clarity" made that behavior seem... I guess pathetic is the only word that fits. If there was a prize for the world's biggest doormat, I would have been the reigning champion. I swore my behavior would change, and surprisingly it did. (For the most part.)

"The lives of our children are at stake," I said when she finally paused to take a breath. "What is a few years of discomfort compared to that? We're going, and that's all there is to it."

"Harry James Potter, I am not an Auror sworn to obey your commands. I am your wife."

"Yes, and under normal circumstances we would continue to be equal partners in this marriage. But these aren't normal circumstances. This is the end of the world."

Ginny rolled her eyes. Yes, the little witch actually rolled her eyes at me. "Stop being so bloody melodramatic."

"Stop being such a spoiled brat, and I might think about it."

That's when drew her wand. She didn't cast a powerful curse—just a plain old Bat-Bogey Hex. Still, with everything that going on it made me furious. I batted her hex away like an annoying insect, and then disarmed her with more force than was necessary, an action I regretted for years to come. In my defense I was use to dealing with dark wizards, not Quidditch reporters. While Ginny's dueling skills had grown rusty since the end of the war, mine were still razor-sharp.

"Now listen carefully," I told my immobilized wife as she hung a meter off the floor. "From now until the end of this mess there will be one person making the decisions for our family, and that person will be me. Not you, not your father, not your brothers, not Minister Bones, and certainly not those fools in Wizengamot or at the ICW. Is that clear enough for you?"

"Fine. Now will you please put me down?"

"That depends... are you going to attack me again?"

"I didn't attack you. Not really. I was just trying to snap you out of your foul mood. We've gotten through rough patches like this before, and we can do again."

"No, you couldn't be more wrong. Compared to the eruption of Lake Taupo, Tom Riddle was nothing more than a tiny zit on your arse. It has only been a few days, but the violence and murders have already started. If things keep getting worse—and there is no reason to believe they won't—there is an excellent chance that everyone on this planet will be dead in five years!"

Thanks to her mother's bedtime stories Ginny always believed that the Boy-Who-Lived could solve any of her problems, and up until that point in our lives I had done just that. But now she could hear the real fear in my voice. At first she seemed to be in shock, but then my words sank in and she began to sob. Quietly at first, but then with more and more force until her whole body was shaking. Reluctantly I cancel the Levitation Spell, and gathered her in my arms.

"What are we going to do?"

It was the same question Hermione had asked me earlier, but Ginny wasn't interested in a practical answer. No, she wanted reassurances that I couldn't give her. So instead of being honest, I lied and told her that everything would be fine.

That's when her desperate hands started to roam. After my encounter with Hermione in the broom closet I wasn't in the mood. "The rest of the family is waiting for us up in the Gryffindor common room. We don't have time for this."

"Harry, we're going to live at the South Pole with a bunch of Yeti. Who knows what the living conditions will be like? This may be the last moment of privacy we get for weeks or months or even years. Please, I need you."

I may not have been in the mood, but turning her down would have started another bitter argument. As a compromise I dropped to my knees, which earned me a lusty growl of approval. Being a parseltongue is a useless gift for the most part, but there are times when it come in handy.

* * *

Ginny had been pacified for the moment, but the rest of the Weasleys weren't so obliging. After Andromeda escorted the children out of the common room, Ron started off with the questions. He didn't even bother waiting until I finished my explaining my proposal.

"But why move to Antarctica of all places? Why not just use the caves we have found here in Britain?"

It was hard to keep my temper in check, but somehow I managed it. "Percy, how many suitable caves have the Aurors and the other scouts found so far?"

"About forty, but according to Headmistress Sprout and Neville only six of them are worth using."

"And where are those six caves located?"

"Three are here in Scotland, another is in Wales, and the last two are in the north of England close to York," Percy replied after consulting one of this notebooks.

"Ron, think about that for a moment," I said. "Even if we find enough caves, they'll be scattered all over the world, which means the wizards and witches standing guard over them will be scattered all over the world. The greater our exposure, the greater the chance that the muggles will accidentally find us."

"And given how volatile things are, they will shoot first and ask questions later," Hermione added. "Especially if they think we're hoarding food or other critical supplies."

"Alright, so we dig tunnels right here under Hogwarts and the Forbidden Forest," George said. "The defensive wards are already in place, plus the climate is better."

I shook my head in frustration. Even at that stage I could see the violent future stretching out ahead of us, so why couldn't they?

"We're already running out of living space, so people will want to expand the size of the castle. Plus they will want to build new houses in Hogsmeade and play Quidditch out on the pitch and have picnics down by the Black Lake. In a matter of months this place will start to look like a small city, and that will attract attention. The kind of attention that could start a war between us and the muggles."

"But down in Antarctica the freezing weather will force us to live underground and out of sight like the Goblins," Bill reasoned. "You want to take our options away from us. For our own good, of course."

"Fleur, do us all a favor and cram your husband's self-righteous crap back up his arse," Pansy snapped.

That comment ignited the famous Weasley tempers. Arthur had to raise his voice—something he hadn't done in years—to calm his children down. "Why do you feel the need to insult William?" he asked his least favorite daughter-in-law.

"Because he was being an idiot," Pansy replied with her usual amount of tact. "Harry doesn't want to do any of this. He's just trying to keep us safe, and to do that we must abandon Hogwarts."

"What are you talking about?" George asked. "The muggles don't know anything about—"

Pansy cut him off. "Oh please. How many muggleborns know about the location of Hogwarts? And Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley and the Ministry of Magic and St Mungo's Hospital? Hundreds? Maybe thousands? Why do you think so many pureblood families supported the Dark Lord and his agenda? Do you think it was because we liked taking orders from a psychotic lunatic? No, it was because he understood the security risks that the muggleborn and their families posed to our world. It will take just one traitor working with the muggle government to get us all killed."

That started another round in the endless debate about which is superior: the wizards with their magic, or the muggles with their science and technology? We couldn't come up with an answer, perhaps because there is no definitive answer to be found.

In the end the debate was irrelevant. I made it clear to the others that I was leaving Hogwarts no matter what, and Ginny and our children were coming with me. Hermione volunteered her support, and Ron reluctantly went along with his wife. However the real tie-breaker was Pansy.

"You honestly think Hogwarts is in danger?" Percy asked her.

"Ignatius, my father has dealt with the muggles in the past. He has even bribed their government officials on several occasions, and according to his sources the muggles know a great deal about our world. Oblivions can only hide so much."

Percy glanced over at Arthur, who slowly nodded his head. The rest of the boys weren't happy, but none of them were willing to go against their father's decision. It was agreed that the entire Potter/Weasley/Parkinson clan would move south together.

* * *

For several months I've debated with myself about telling you—my descendants—what happened after that particular family meeting. It's embarrassing, but also important if you want to understand the odd course of my life. According to the Hag's prophecy I'm suppose to preserve the Truth, so for the sake of historical accuracy here it is:

"Pansy, could I speak with you for a moment?" I asked as everyone went their separate ways for the night.

"Ignatius, please go collect Sebastian and Livia. I will join you in our room in a few minutes."

Ginny had already disappeared down the stairs, so I pulled Pansy back into the empty common room. I was exhausted, so I got right to the point. "Why did you really support me just now, and what do you expect in return for that support?"

Instead of giving me an answer, Pansy reached underneath her green silk blouse and pulled out the tiny hourglass at the end of the gold chain she wore around her neck. That was a familiar but terrible sign.

"No," I sputtered. "No, don't even think about it."

Pansy smirked. "Do you think I didn't notice how Hermione and Ginny looked? They were positively glowing."

Despite being a grown man, I blushed. "Yes, they were glowing. Both of them. That means I'm useless to you for the next several hours. We will have to do... this another time."

"Nonsense, I prefer a wizard who has already been put through his paces. It does wonders for your stamina. Now get that cute little arse over here so I can put this chain around your neck."

You can see where this is going. Yes, I know. According to the many Harry Potter biographies you've read, my relationship with Pansy didn't start until after our marriage. Well I'm sorry to burst your bubble, but that timeline is bogus.

The whole farce started after the birth of Livia Parkinson, which happened about two years before the eruption of Lake Taupo. Pansy had given Percy a legitimate son and daughter as promised, so now she wanted to take a lover. Or at least that's what she told Percy.

In reality I think she wanted her husband—with whom she had reluctantly fallen in love—to object to the idea of an open marriage. I also think Pansy had concocted an elaborate fantasy about how things were suppose to play out. Percy was going to bellow at her like caveman, drag her off to the bedroom, and then ravage her repeatedly while declaring his undying love.

Percy, it seems, had other plans. He calmly informed his wife that he was happy to accept an open marriage like a proper pureblood aristocrat. In fact he already had a lover of his own waiting in the wings: Audrey Phillips, a sweet muggleborn witch who worked at the Ministry of Magic in the accounting department.

Pansy was not amused by this unexpected turn of events. She wanted revenge, but that turned out to be a problem since finding a lover was harder than she originally thought it would be. It wasn't that wizards didn't find her attractive, because back then she was sexy as hell. No, there was another obstacle in her way.

"Potter, this is all your fault," Pansy snarled when we met at a posh muggle hotel in Edinburgh. I thought she wanted to discuss some new dark wizard on the rise, but instead I was subjected to the details of her unhappy marriage. "Every wizard I approach is terrified of offending You-Know-Who. That's what they are calling you nowadays in certain pureblood circles. I hope it makes you happy, because it's ruining my sex life."

(Being called the new You-Know-Who did make me happy. If the dark wizards and witches were afraid of me they wouldn't commit any crimes, so I wouldn't have to kill them. At least that's what I told myself. It was better than the alternative—that I was well on my way to becoming the next Tom Riddle.)

"Pansy, I'm sure there is someone out there for you. Have you considered dating a muggle. There are a few billion of them to choose from."

"Are you suggesting that I allow a filthy muggle to defile me? Are you insane? That will never happen."

"Maybe you can find a foreign wizard who hasn't heard of me before?"

"I had someone a bit closer to home in mind. Someone who already knows how to conduct a discreet affair."

So there you have the awful truth: the storybook romance between the Great Seeker and his Consort started because of a nasty case of blackmail. If I didn't coöperate, Pansy was threatening to tell Ginny about Rose's true paternity. That would have destroy several lives, so I gave in to her demands.

In hindsight I will say that I didn't put-up much of a fight. Why not?

To answer that question you must understand my other two relationships. I never stopped loving Hermione, but over time she had twisted our affair into some bizarre gothic romance. She did love me, but she loved the emotional drama of our "forbidden passion" even more. (Her words, not mine.) Ginny also had issues. In her mind sex was an athletic competition, and her orgasm was always the finish line. At first this selfish approach was fine by me, but after several years I needed a change.

And Pansy certainly was a change. Traveling an hour into the past using an illegal Time Turner, donning our Invisibility Cloaks, taking a broom ride to the edge of the castle's wards, apparating to our cozy love shack on the Isle of Wight, stripping naked... she made it all seem like a seductive and playful game. That was key selling point for me: she made sex fun again.

But what was the selling point for Pansy? I would like to think it was my charming personality or my roguish good looks that first captivated her. But as a wise man named Jules once said: that shite ain't the truth. The truth is Pansy wanted her lover to be a powerful and good-looking wizard under the age of thirty, so her choices were limited. I was conveniently close by, and thanks to my affair with Hermione she could blackmail me. Being in control like that was a big turn-on for her inner Slytherin.

Now that you have the necessary background material, let's skip forward to the crux of the conversation I had with Pansy during our last fling on the Isle of Wight:

"When do you want to schedule a vote in the Wizengamot?" Pansy asked as we gathered our discarded clothes from the floor.

I shrugged my shoulders. "The muggles have a very old saying: _Inter arma enim silent leges_."

"In times of war, the law falls silent," Pansy translated.

"Ten points to Slytherin. As far as I'm concerned the Wizengamot no longer matters."

"Potter, do you have a new brain tumor or something? Just because you don't _need_ legal authorization from the Wizengamot to move to Antarctica doesn't mean it wouldn't be a useful asset to have in the future. Political legitimacy is a weapon you can use to smack your enemies around when they start to annoy you. Which they will, sooner or later."

"That may be true, but I'm not going to waste weeks and weeks of precious time begging for votes."

"You won't have to beg," Pansy said as she began removing the wrinkles from my robes. "My father and his friends will support you, as will Draco Malfoy and his conservative cronies."

"How can you be sure of that? Won't they want to make a last stand at Hogwarts like Ron and his brothers suggested?"

"You may be scared of the muggles, but most purebloods are terrified of them. You are offering those weaklings a solution to their problems, so why wouldn't they take it?"

That didn't sound right to me, so I looked through Pansy's blue eyes and into her mind, trying to find her hidden agenda. But there wasn't one. Instead I found something else. Despite the great sex we shared—and it was great—we didn't really like each other. However to my amazement I found that Pansy trusted me to protect the lives of her children. She trusted me absolutely. That's when I realized she was no longer my enemy.

I didn't fall in love with her that day, but it was my first step down that path. Just like earlier when I had taken my first step down the path of falling out of love with Ginny. Please keep in mind that I'm not proud about this turn of events, but I'm not ashamed either. After a century of observation I found that when it comes to love most people are either happy fools or lonely cynics, and I would rather be a happy fool.

"If the Wizengamot is going to vote on whether to support my plan, they should do it tomorrow morning. If they wait any longer it will be too late."

An hour had passed since we left Hogwarts, and we returned just as our past selves were magically disappearing from sight. Percy and Ginny (and Hermione) never suspected a thing. No one ever suspected a thing, and that's how it stayed thanks to one very cunning witch.

* * *

Pansy's prediction was proven correct when the Wizengamot met in the Great Hall of Hogwarts the next morning. The purebloods were desperate for a place to hide, and Antarctica sounded fine to them. They didn't even complain about living with the Yeti. My own New Equality Party proved to be a bigger hassle. Many wanted to stay at Hogwarts, and the only thing that saved us from a lengthy debate was Minister Bones.

"Harry, do you intend to create a Floo connection to the Yeti settlement the Scamanders discovered?" Susan asked.

"Yes," I replied. "According to Hermione Weasley's calculations, that would be the most efficient method for moving large numbers of wizards and witches south."

"Alright, so we set up the connection here at Hogwarts. That means we won't have to permanently abandon the castle, but if things go pear-shaped with the muggles we'll have a secure escape route available."

I didn't like it, but Susan's sensible compromise won a unanimous vote from the Wizengamot.

The events that followed played-out pretty much as they do in the history books. A Floo was indeed created between Scotland and Antarctica. Or did we connect the two sites? Or did we hook them up to each other? I'm the greatest wizard in the world, but even I think magical verbs are confusing.

Anyway, over forty members of the extended Granger family were already camping out in the Forbidden Forest, and it turns out that one of Hermione's many cousins taught physics at a local grammar school. Poor John Granger nearly had a heart attack when he discovered that a wizard could conjure what he called an Einstein Rosen Bridge out of thin air. Of course as you know, that simple observation is considered by many to be the birth of modern Technomancy.

While the new long-range Floo Network was being plugged in, Bill Weasley was in London conferring with his employers, the Goblins of Gringotts. The prospect of digging throughout the Transantarctic Mountains without being hunted down and eaten by the Yeti was appealing to the greedy little monsters, and a bargain was soon stuck. In exchange for certain mining concessions the Goblins would oversee the construction of the new tunnels. Whether or not we needed their help is still an open question. The did make some improvements to the Yeti's original designs, but they were mostly minor changes.

While others handled the high-level engineering, I and thousands of other wizards and witches were stuck doing the grunt work. The whole process was mind-numbingly boring even with the use of magic.

First we would drill a small hole two or three meters into the bedrock. Afterwards we filled the hole with explosives. (The Yeti used a homemade version of dynamite, which George enhanced with certain unstable potions.) Then we detonated the explosives, and disposed of the rubble that was blasted loose. The Yeti did this work with their huge muscles, but we simply turned the rubble into portkeys. (As a precaution we dumped it in the ocean under the Ross Ice Shelf where the muggle spy satellites wouldn't be able to see it.) Once we were done we would repeat the process again. And again. And again.

Still, anything was better than watching your loved ones starve to death.

The work Neville and his Herbologist were doing behind us was equally back-breaking, but at least it was intellectually stimulating. For a Herbologist anyway. Back during those early days Neville always had a goofy grin plastered on his face.

Even though we were working like slaves to improve our new home, news from the muggle world still trickled down to Antarctica thanks to the constant stream of new arrivals. That's how we heard about the end of the war on the Korean peninsula. The South Koreans had launched a massive counterattack and conquered North Korea in less than a week. This was made possible thanks to the joint military support of China, the United States, Russia, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, and the Philippines.

"Some of those countries have been mortal enemies for centuries, so why are they working together now?" Hermione asked latest group of arrivals.

"No one is sure, but according to the latest rumors the muggles have formed a new world-wide government they are calling the Davos Federation," one of the witches explained before she was taken away by the Aurors to be processed.

It was the first time any of us hear that name—a name which would be universally condemned by future generations. As is usually the case, the truth is a bit more complicated. Don't get me wrong. The Davos Federation was indeed guilty of many crimes against humanity, but it also had several positive traits—speed of action being foremost among them. It was only sixteen days since the eruption of Lake Taupo, but my adversary had already made a brilliant début on the world stage.


End file.
